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The ANSI SCSI committee invented the SCSI 3 SBP protocol in order to use IEEE 1394 (aka FireWire, aka i.Link) as a physical layer for SCSI.
The IDE/ATA/ATAPI folks quickly adopted this for IDE devices, and have single chip "tailgate" adapters to turn an IDE device into a 1394 device. All (or at
least the vast majority) of the 1394 disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, DVD-ROMs, etc. that one can buy today consist of an IDE drive with a tailgate adapter board. The nice thing about this is that it eliminates most of the disgusting and ugly features of the IDE interface, such as the limit of two devices and 18 inches of cable.
But what annoys the heck out of me is that it seems that no one has bothered to build such tailgate chips (or boards) for SCSI devices. I'd love to slap an adapter onto my SCSI scanner, for instance, so that I can have more flexibility in where I position it, rather than having to have it within a few feet of my computer.
For that matter, I'm also disgruntled that no one seems willing to sell me the IDE tailgate adapter boards. The manufacturers only want to sell them to OEMs.
Like this?
http://catalog.belk...=&Product_Id=100393
Belkin FW-SCSI Win/Mac [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 04 2004]
SCSI-IDE
http://www.verbatim...productID=ARS7720UW
Here ya go. [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 04 2004]
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Annotation:
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Yet another idea crying out for some venture capital... |
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...or maybe they just want you to forget IDE and SCSI altogether and make everything 1394, kind of like the PC makers trying to shake the legacy ports. |
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I've always thought the desperate attempts to be different were dumb anyway... |
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koz says "maybe they just want you to forget IDE and SCSI altogether and make everything 1394". I wish that was true. But in reality, "THEY" want us to move to Serial ATA or USB2, neither of which is available now, rather than 1394 which is. Despite being an early "supporter", Intel has done everything in their power to try to kill 1394. |
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Anyhow, moving to all 1394 peripherals (at least for the high speed ones) would still be a good thing, but it doesn't explain why there exist IDE tailgate chips but not SCSI ones. |
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The closest thing I've found so far is the Orange Micro "OrangeLink" Firewire/SCSI converter, which apparently must not support the standard SCSI 3 SBP protocol, since Orange says it's for the Macintosh only. |
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I also find it inherently annoying that one cannot simply find these (which I didn't know were referred to as tailgate) adapters. |
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Personally, I'm kind of pissed that there's not a SCSI tailgate to pop on an IDE disk. I'd love to be able to pop a cheap IDE drive on externally onto a SCSI cable to load it up, without having to open up a system and fiddle. |
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The closest I see to anything similar is the "Pop 5 IDE drives into this box and hook up a SCSI-2 connection to the back" IDE RAID boxes. Of course, they're incredibly overpriced... |
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What's the sinister explanation behind the "Intel is killing FireWire" conspiracy theory? (There's gotta be one.) |
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It's my belief that the SCSI/IDE thing is used for price discrimination on hard disks. Howl away at the unfairness of it all, but price discrimination ain't all bad... |
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Firewire to SCSI adapters are
readily available, and although less
common and more expensive, SCSI
to IDE adapters are also out there.
One brand/model being Acard's
SCSIDE. |
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In fact I have one on my desk. It's
for 2.5" IDE drives in older Apple
laptops, which used 2.5" SCSI. |
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