I have an 386SX and an 386DX, both have SCSI HDDs, around 2GB in size. One of them have even a very similar (1540CF) adapter in it. Nothing that old "just works", but making a SCSI system run correctly is not a hard job, and resources that might help is plenty. I suggest you to go for it.

I'm using an AHA-1542CF in one of my 286 PCs. As long as the SCSI cabling + termination is correct, it does "just work".

tayyare wrote:

I have an 386SX and an 386DX, both have SCSI HDDs, around 2GB in size. One of them have even a very similar (1540CF) adapter in it. Nothing that old "just works", but making a SCSI system run correctly is not a hard job, and resources that might help is plenty. I suggest you to go for it.

Brilliant, Thank you!

derSammler wrote:

I'm using an AHA-1542CF in one of my 286 PCs. As long as the SCSI cabling + termination is correct, it does "just work".

Well I've learned something. I didn't know termination was required as normally it happens inside the attached units. What do you do with a cable with only 2 ends?

Both ends must be terminated. Depending on the device, this is either done by a jumper or by resistor packs. Also, one device on the bus (and only *one*) should provide termination power. Note that you have to take care when using both internal and external devices. The SCSI controller must not be terminated in that case. If you detach the external device(s), a terminator must be connected to the external SCSI port.

derSammler wrote:

Both ends must be terminated. Depending on the device, this is either done by a jumper or by resistor packs. Also, one device on the bus (and only *one*) should provide termination power. Note that you have to take care when using both internal and external devices. The SCSI controller must not be terminated in that case. If you detach the external device(s), a terminator must be connected to the external SCSI port.

So at each end of the SCSI chain, there will be a terminator either on a device or on a cable. How can you ascertain where the termination power is coming from? Do you use a powered terminator and a passive terminator at different ends? (sorry for my n00bness, I've never used SCSI before).

On the SCSI note actually, one of the other investments I was planning for this wee beastie is a SB16 CT1770 with SCSI on board, but what exactly does a soundcard do with SCSI?

Vaudane wrote:

On the SCSI note actually, one of the other investments I was planning for this wee beastie is a SB16 CT1770 with SCSI on board, but what exactly does a soundcard do with SCSI?

My guess is that's for internal SCSI CD-ROM and similar optical devices: when they started coming out, people had old computers being upgraded with multimedia stuff like sound cards, which are useful with Audio CDs. So, sound card manufacturers started adding IDE and SCSI connectors to the sound cards so you could connect the CD drives too.

So would that mean if I got the CT1770, I wouldn't also need the Adaptec AHA-1542CF?

I don't remember what chipset is used on the Creative cards with SCSI, but it's likely to be much slower than the 1542. Those were adequate for slow CDROM transfers (2x-4x at the time at most) not for fast HDD transfers. Also very likely you wouldn't be able to boot from a HDD attached to the sound card. You need a boot BIOS on the SCSI adapter for that; I'm pretty sure that the sound card SCSI adapters don't have one, whereas the AHA1542 does.

Above is correct, You cant boot from a soundcard, I doubt the scsi controller even has the necessary to detect HDD's.
Some HDD's have inbuilt termination say set by a jumper, others will require something physical on the cable. Finding out the HDD model and a quick google will tell you.

Really in this day and age, SCSI drives are old, noisy and slow when compared with something like a CF card which is better in every way possible, accept 1.

SCSI WAS the dogs, and if you do fancy playing around with it now is definitely the time.

chinny22 wrote:

Above is correct, You cant boot from a soundcard, I doubt the scsi controller even has the necessary to detect HDD's. Some HDD's […]
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Above is correct, You cant boot from a soundcard, I doubt the scsi controller even has the necessary to detect HDD's.
Some HDD's have inbuilt termination say set by a jumper, others will require something physical on the cable. Finding out the HDD model and a quick google will tell you.

Really in this day and age, SCSI drives are old, noisy and slow when compared with something like a CF card which is better in every way possible, accept 1.

SCSI WAS the dogs, and if you do fancy playing around with it now is definitely the time.

That's fair. On my dosbox I run it off SSD, but when it comes to my antique, I want to keep it as "time-correct" as possible. I'm making slight compromises by planning to use dos 6.22 and win3.11WG when it currently has dos5 and win3.1 on it, but the stability overrides the time-correctness there.

Once I find a SCSI drive I like (read: can afford and isn't stupid size like >10 GB), I'll look up documentation to check for jumpers/terminators.

I'll probably still go for the CT1770 as it just seems like a good sound card, I'll just leave it off the SCSI bus.