SCSI controller: Difference between revisions
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This list tries to give an overview of all available SCSI controllers for RISC OS computers, ever. |
This list tries to give an overview of all available SCSI controllers for RISC OS computers, ever. |
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=== Acorn |
=== Acorn === |
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This is the "original" design - and came in three different variants, as AKA30, AKA31, AKA32. |
This is the "original" design - and came in three different variants, as AKA30, AKA31, AKA32. |
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Revision as of 04:01, 4 March 2023
SCSI controller
Introduction
The SCSI bus is a system to connect devices to computers. Devices means: harddiscs, scanners, graphic tablets, storage systems and media drives, e.g. ZIP drives, JAZ drives, magneto-optical (MO) drives, bernoulli discs and many more. It is designed as an extension of the systembus into the "outer world" but is used to install internal drives too. The SCSI technlogy had its prime times in the years 1985 - 2005. There are many types of speeds and connectin protocols - most of them are backward compatible. Nowadays it has been superseeded by SATA and USB protocols.
However, for RISC PC and Archimedes computers it could be a useful way to connect the machine with peripherals. Newer machines (Raspberry Pi, Titanium, BeagleBoard, ARMini) often dont allow to connect a SCSI adapter - and should use the newer types of peripheral connectivity.
To install a SCSI system at least one device is needed that connects to a host adapter (installed in the computer) by a (parallel) cable. The SCSI connection has to be "terminated" at both ends of the cable. Therefore sometimes a so called terminator needs to be installed, especially on older devices and host adapters. Newer devices often come with a jumper to switch the termination on/off (e.g. at ZIP drives). SCSI host adapter sometimes come with the ability to measure the need for termination and can then auto-terminate their endpoint of the connection.
Controller
A so called SCSI controller is the host bus adapter that has to be installed into the computer. There are many different controllers available, some of them produced by Acorn but the most are third party. There are older 8 bit SCSI controllers and newer 32 bit wide host bus adaptors that are able to use DMA (in the first two podule slots of an RISC PC). Some of them are normal podules, but other came as proprietory add-on cards (HCCS) or in unusual ways of interconnect (VerticalTwist).
This list tries to give an overview of all available SCSI controllers for RISC OS computers, ever.
Acorn
This is the "original" design - and came in three different variants, as AKA30, AKA31, AKA32.
Owl
Morley
Vertical Twist
HCCS
ACE
ACE of Dortmund (Germany) made some interfaces for RISC OS computers, one of them had been the ACE SCSI controller named SCSI Connect. It allows 16 bit (Archimedes) or 32 bit (RISC PC) connections and establishes a Fast-SCSI-2 connection. Internal 50pol, external 50pol half-pitch.
