Why was SCSI(scuzzy) Discontinued?

[Patmian212]

Why was scuzzy discontinued?... I mean fine USB and Firewire are alot smaller but scuzzy was very fast and I feel it is still a great piece of technology.
Also who here still uses scuzzy?

[edesignuk]

SCSI was (in my limited experiance) expensive, and a pain in the ass. For external devices FireWire/USB is just so much easier, and for internal drives, SATA is a great option for workstations, though fast SCSI drives still have the edge for server appliances, still very expensive though.

[maya]

SCSI was (in my limited experiance) expensive, and a pain in the ass. For external devices FireWire/USB is just so much easier, and for internal drives, SATA is a great option for workstations, though fast SCSI drives still have the edge for server appliances, still very expensive though.

You are correct indeed, a PITA wow good thing those days are behind us all. :)

[Sun Baked]

It was killed in consumer Macs due to cost.

If you want it add it to your PowerMac, but aome cards still give people deep sleep issues.

Not a problem if it's a 24/7 Server -- but some people might not like it if a PowerMac G5 is blowing hot air next to their bed.

[Norouzi]

SCSI was great if you needed alot of speed, but the cost was probabily not worth it compared to the size and price point of ATA drives. Also there was always a hastle with SCSI ID's and termination. Then for external devices you had to worry about how many devices were daisy chained, and how long your cable was since if you went over 6 feet you started to have issues. SCSI's also not hot swappable, so if you had several SCSI devices and wanted to change them out you had to shutdown to change them out.

[Patmian212]

You are correct indeed, a PITA wow good thing those days are behind us all. :)

I dont remember much from the scuzzy days so can anyone refresh my memory... What amde it a pain in the ash?

[Sun Baked]

I dont remember much from the scuzzy days so can anyone refresh my memory... What amde it a pain in the ash?To terminate or not to terminate.

The devices (like zips) with limited termination settings or IDs.

Too many devices with pre-set termination setting and the same ID.

ID conflicts, termination conflicts, cables too long, various types and varieties of SCSI.

[maya]

I dont remember much from the scuzzy days so can anyone refresh my memory... What amde it a pain in the ash?

If you do not remember all the better however as the poster above has stated some generalized issues with SCSI:


SCSI was great if you needed alot of speed, but the cost was probabily not worth it compared to the size and price point of ATA drives. Also there was always a hastle with SCSI ID's and termination. Then for external devices you had to worry about how many devices were daisy chained, and how long your cable was since if you went over 6 feet you started to have issues. SCSI's also not hot swappable, so if you had several SCSI devices and wanted to change them out you had to shutdown to change them out. :)

[jxyama]

SCSI also wasn't hot-pluggable, no?

[oingoboingo]

SCSI also wasn't hot-pluggable, no?

Using SCA80 connectors, yes.

[Norouzi]

SCSI also wasn't hot-pluggable, no?

Nope not at all, and actually on my old 8600 I had a SCSI CD burner and if I didn't turn on the CD burner at just the right time at startup OS 9 would freeze durring startup.

EDIT: "Using SCA80 connectors, yes." I actually didn't know that.

[jxyama]

Using SCA80 connectors, yes.

i had no idea either...

[maya]

Wow a trip down memory lane. I am just glad those days are history in regards to SCSI, life has become much much simpler in that regard. :)

[combatcolin]

Think of SCSI as the father of FireWire and your there.

FW improved on the godd features and threw out the bad.

Which, yes is termination.

[pianojoe]

Those were the days... My first SCSI CD burner... a Philips. It did 2x, I was the hero of the neighborhood. Blank CD-Rs were $20. You usually left the room when Toast (by Astarte) was on duty.

SCSI in Macs - I'm so glad it's been terminated.

[bousozoku]

I can't say that I ever found SCSI difficult, only expensive.

The only problem I had with SCSI equipment is that it was more expensive because the equipment had to be intelligent. As far as termination goes, companies such as APS Technologies came out with intelligent termination and it saved a lot of people headaches.

FireWire is a good thing and certainly a worthy replacement for SCSI in consumer equipment but it hasn't made much progress and it's rather slow but that's okay for most people.

[combatcolin]

Eh?

FireWire slow?

Compared to what, Enterprise E??

[oingoboingo]

Nope not at all, and actually on my old 8600 I had a SCSI CD burner and if I didn't turn on the CD burner at just the right time at startup OS 9 would freeze durring startup.

EDIT: "Using SCA80 connectors, yes." I actually didn't know that.

This site describes the Single Connector Attachment (SCA) interface. While I don't think it's absolutely essential for hot-swap support, it does make it a lot easier, more reliable and safer. SCA-80 connectors are most commonly found in RAID cabinets and enclosures.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/scsi/cables_SCA.htm

[MacsRgr8]

SCSI is still used in many-an-external-device.
At work we use LTO 2 drives as backup drives, which are connected to the backup servers via SCSI connectors.

FireWire is definitely much easier. Always hot pluggable, simpler connector.... remember SCSI, SCSI Fast, 1, 2, 3, Narrow, Wide, Low Voltage, High Voltage...

Apple killed SCSI on its consumer Macs by introducing the iMac which not only had no more Floppy Drive, it also had no more SCSI connector! :eek: That was a first after more than a decade of Macs!

So, me thinks Apple killed consumer SCSI because of the difficulty in having such a variety of SCSI, and USB seemed an excellent alternative for the not so speed power hungry external devices. Later FireWire would be the solution for the more power hungry stuff.

[maya]

SCSI is still used in many-an-external-device.
At work we use LTO 2 drives as backup drives, which are connected to the backup servers via SCSI connectors.

FireWire is definitely much easier. Always hot pluggable, simpler connector.... remember SCSI, SCSI Fast, 1, 2, 3, Narrow, Wide, Low Voltage, High Voltage...

Apple killed SCSI on its consumer Macs by introducing the iMac which not only had no more Floppy Drive, it also had no more SCSI connector! :eek: That was a first after more than a decade of Macs!

So, me thinks Apple killed consumer SCSI because of the difficulty in having such a variety of SCSI, and USB seemed an excellent alternative for the not so speed power hungry external devices. Later FireWire would be the solution for the more power hungry stuff.


FireWire was introduced first in the B&W G3 PM's, memories. It still had the option for a SCSI card however that was the transition period.

I am glad I don't have to work with SCSI, I would drive me nuts at times when I was strapped for time. SCSI will live on in server ends for now, until FireWire 1600 is released. :)

[MacsRgr8]

FireWire was introduced first in the B&W G3 PM's, memories. It still had the option for a SCSI card however that was the transition period.


If i recall correctly the PowerMac G3 B&W Server had an Adaptec 29160 SCSI PCI card pre-installed, with a 9 GB 10.000 rpm HD internally attached to it.
That was pretty high end stuff for a Mac back then. That SCSI card can handle much more data/sec than FireWire now can.

So, here's to hoping for FireWire 1600 too! ;)

[Mechcozmo]

SCSI was fast alright, but:
1. Expensive
2. All different kinds
3. Not hot-swappable (for things like USB flash drives)
4. Huge cables made the routing hard in the cases
5. Termination. That should be a movie. That's it.
6. It made Macs less compatible with the other PCs out there, making it harder for Mac users to upgrade.

[Sun Baked]

Basically part of the why are Macs were so far behind the standard PC configurations at the time.

The drives were several times more expensive than an IDE drive and much smaller at the same price.

The Performas got rid of the SCSI HD, and were thus able to increase the size of the drive while dropping the price.

People were always complaining about the price of the drive upgrades that were so much smaller than a competing IDE drive of the day.

Heck how many people would buy a 2GB IDE drive instead of the drastically more expensive 500/750MB SCSI drive for a Performa, Quadra, etc.

And yes you could have put a SCSI drive in some of the machines since they still had a SCSI CD-ROM drive.

---

The switch to IDE drive helped Apple catch up the the PC specs rapidly, since we were falling behind rapidly at the time.

[CanadaRAM]

I can't say that I ever found SCSI difficult, only expensive.
The only problem I had with SCSI equipment is that it was more expensive because the equipment had to be intelligent.

That's the thing -- with SCSI the intelligence for drive management is on the drive and the CPU load is minimized. With IDE and SATA, managing the drive takes cycles from the processor. Some early tests of SATA were coming in at 10% processor usage just to use the hard drive.

This was obviously a serious problem for a Mac with a 8 MHz - 120 MHz 68000- 603/604 processor, with not much processor speed to throw around. The heavy lifting *had* to be done by the peripheral's processor. The first IDE equipped Macs were some Performas (I forget the models) and the PowerMac 4400, which suffered from terrible performance.

Once the MHz started increasing and G3's came out, more tasks could be pushed onto the CPU, and cheaper peripherals with no onboard intelligence could be used.

This is one reason why machines with 40 times the raw processing power as ten years ago don't perform 40 times faster; more and more functions have been moved to "native" software, that is, run by the CPU rather than by outboard specialized processor chips. Well, that and the combination of software bloat and creeping featuritis, but that's another post.

- Still scarred from my first SCSI hard drive purchase: EMac (Everex) 20 Mb, (yes, M not G) $1495.00, for my Mac Plus. I still have the Plus and the Imagewriter LQ in the basement.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

[saabmp3]

That's the thing -- with SCSI the intelligence for drive management is on the drive and the CPU load is minimized. With IDE and SATA, managing the drive takes cycles from the processor. Some early tests of SATA were coming in at 10% processor usage just to use the hard drive.

This was obviously a serious problem for a Mac with a 8 MHz - 120 MHz 68000- 603/604 processor, with not much processor speed to throw around. The heavy lifting *had* to be done by the peripheral's processor. The first IDE equipped Macs were some Performas (I forget the models) and the PowerMac 4400, which suffered from terrible performance.

Once the MHz started increasing and G3's came out, more tasks could be pushed onto the CPU, and cheaper peripherals with no onboard intelligence could be used.

This is one reason why machines with 40 times the raw processing power as ten years ago don't perform 40 times faster; more and more functions have been moved to "native" software, that is, run by the CPU rather than by outboard specialized processor chips. Well, that and the combination of software bloat and creeping featuritis, but that's another post.

- Still scarred from my first SCSI hard drive purchase: EMac (Everex) 20 Mb, (yes, M not G) $1495.00, for my Mac Plus. I still have the Plus and the Imagewriter LQ in the basement.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

Hmm, I think you might be a little confused. IDE stands for "Integrated Drive Electronics". Basically, the controller chip was built in, onboard. This is one of the major parts which made the drives less expensive to manufacture.

They still might have taken more CPU time to process information, but, remember, SCSI needs a controller card which is MUCH more complex than an IDE controller.

BEN

[DanTekGeek]

I have a SCSI drive on one of my PCs, and its insanley fast. Unfotunatly, as everyone has said, the cost is prohibitve for upgrades or really anything else.

[Sun Baked]

A quick look at bare drives at Fry's electronics...

A Seagate SCSI drive is about $659.99 for a 149GB 10k drive and $159.99 for a 36GB 10k RPM drive

While it's $149.99 for 200GB 7.2k RPM PATA drive or a 40GB 5.4k drive for $59.95

While it's $139.99 for 200GB 7.2k RPM SATA drive or a 40GB 5.4k drive for $99.95

Anybody want to buy a $660 bare 149GB SCSI drive for their computer? or spend much less for a 400GB SATA drive...

or be a cheapskate an buy a $50 60GB drive?

Wasn't too different when we first started getting IDE drives.

Of course with SCSI it was rather easy to add drive externally, even though we had problems -- FW made adding drive a cake walk.

[pigbat]

SCSI is still used in many-an-external-device.
At work we use LTO 2 drives as backup drives, which are connected to the backup servers via SCSI connectors.


Aren't those LTO 2 drives sweet? We have ours fiber attached and I'm amazed at how fast we can do backups.

[bousozoku]

Eh?

FireWire slow?

Compared to what, Enterprise E??

Yes, FireWire is slow. 50 MB/second compared to the standard Ultra2SCSI drive in my 1999 blue and white G3 which runs at 80 MB/second or an UltraSCSI320 drive which runs at 320 MB/second or...you get the picture.

saabmp3:

Integrated Drive Electronics don't mean Intelligent Drive Electronics, if you get my meaning. The CPU still has to shuffle the data in between devices, whereas SCSI devices worked pretty much independently of the CPU. IDE/E-IDE does it faster but it doesn't do it efficiently, never achieving anywhere near the quoted data rate--UltraATA/100 rarely achieves more than 66 MB/sec.

[Littleodie914]

Heh... I remember using a SCSI PCI card in our old B&W G3... We still have a Lacie CD burner lying around here somewhere. While it was pretty fast, it had its disadvantages:


Unable to provide power to devices
VERY not hot-pluggable
Huge, bulky cables


I didn't mind sacrificing speed for a few new features ;)

[bangstudios]

Those were the days... My first SCSI CD burner... a Philips. It did 2x, I was the hero of the neighborhood. Blank CD-Rs were $20. You usually left the room when Toast (by Astarte) was on duty.

SCSI in Macs - I'm so glad it's been terminated.
Oh man! Does THAT bring back memories! You had a CDD-521 (enhanced) or CDD-522? :p My first burner was a SCSI CDW900 (Sony). I was VERY careful when burning a disk: $25 was a big investment! :D

(And yes, I'm glad those days are long gone as well!)

[ReanimationLP]

Simple. Because PATA and SATA caught up to it, and was a lot cheaper too!

[Peterkro]

I still have a Plextor Scuzzy burner in my old PC.In past times it was he only thing that could copy anything(nothing illegal you understand)it must be ten years old now and still the latest Liteons et al can't do things it could.

[MacsRgr8]

Aren't those LTO 2 drives sweet? We have ours fiber attached and I'm amazed at how fast we can do backups.

Yep. They're excellent. Fast, and easy to use. Pretty cheap too.
:)