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.
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.
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.
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 😉
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.
Oh man! Does THAT bring back memories! You had a CDD-521 (enhanced) or CDD-522? 😛 My first burner was a SCSI CDW900 (Sony). I was VERY careful when burning a disk: $25 was a big investment! 😀
(And yes, I'm glad those days are long gone as well!)
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.