[G4] Affordable SCSI card for G4 MDD

[Joseph B. Gurman]

     Steven wrote:

>When I look at the specs of the 2940 on the adaptec site I don't see any
>mention of Mac OS under supported operating systems.
>http://tinyurl.com/2wzwl
>
>Which makes me wonder is the AHA-2940 PC only? Can I use it anyway? Or
>is there a different Mac version?

     If you go to the "Products" tab at the top of that page, and pull 
down the menu to "Macintosh," you will see that by its absence on the 
page:

	http://tinyurl.com/2exds

that the 22940 isn't on the list.

     Before we bit the bullet and abandoned SCSI on our OS X systems, 
we found that Adaptec's Mac products:

1.  always had different part numbers from their equivalents without 
the right stuff in ROM,

2. usually had the phrase "Mac kit" tacked on to the end of the product name,

3. with one exception needed new drivers for every release of OS X, 
including some point releases,

4. would hang boot if the new drivers weren't installed, and

5. the one exception is the still-listed 2906, which worked great 
with every SCSI scanner we had, up through 10.1 at least.

     The 2906 is by far the cheapest SCSI host adapter Adaptec makes, 
because it only supports "Fast SCSI" (i.e., SCSI-2) devices, which 
fortunately covered all known SCSI scanners at the time we still used 
them. (We dropped the SCSI scanner we had because its OS X software 
was so poor --- before we knew about VueSCAN). Adaptec claims it's 
compatible with 10.2.x and 10.3.x.

     Here's a wild guess: SCSI-2 implementation is so basic, anyone 
can get it right for almost any version of OS X. If that's true, you 
may not need to buy a SCSI card if you're buying a new scanner: they 
often include a cheap SCSI-2 card. Worth a try. If you're trying to 
hook up an older scanner, check whether it came with an el cheapo 
SCSI card, or if someone you know has a spare.

						Joe Gurman
-- 
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."
                                                             - Douglas 
Adams, 1952 - 2001

Joseph B. Gurman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics
Branch, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA