SCSI confusion - can you help?

[GusBrown]

Hi,

I have a Sony SDX-700C AIT tape drive that I'd like to connect to a laptop with a PCMCIA SCSI controller card. I found an Adaptec card (SlimScsi 1460) but can't figure out whether the two are compatible. Can anyone put me out of my mysery?

The Sony has a 68 pin high density connector, the Adaptec card says it comes with a 50 pin low density (SCSI-1) and a 50 pin high density (SCSI-2) cable. But the Sony is SCSI-3, right? Adaptec also sell a 50 pin high density to 68 pin high density converter (ACK-68P-50P), could I use that? Would it work?

I'm well out of my depth here so any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Gus

 

[catalya]

GusBrown: Why are you trying to connect this to a laptop? Tape drives are high power devices! I'm sure that you have already corrected this problem but I jsut thought I would pass it on that the Adpatec 29160 is a great SCSI controller out right now! You need to read the fine lines when purchasing these because some are not supported on different platforms like servers. They have a great website though for information.

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/su...logy/SCSI+Host+Adapters&fromPage=supportindex

"Astra non mentiuntur"

 

[deanhoofnagle]

If you can connect your AIT drive to a desktop host with the right SCSI interface and use this host as your backup server, you'll likely be much happier than if you run the AIT drive directly interfaced to a notebook. For your AIT drive, any SCSI host you connect it to should have the same 68-pin HD connector your drive has.

If you must interface the drive directly to the laptop, get expert advice from a SCSI specialist familiar with backup drive interfacing.

Avoid using any converter cable or adapter between any SCSI host interface and any backup drive. Don't use (for instance) a 50-pin SCSI host connector with a 50-pin-to-68-pin adapter cable, plugged into the 68-pin SCSI connector on your tape drive. -- Any cable or adapter not specifically allowed by the drive manufacturer can be bad because it may allow your backup software to recognize the tape drive, and it may seem to work; but it may cause errors to crop up during backup operations.

Such errors will be seen eventually as erratic bahavior of the backup system, unexpected error codes, freezes, etc. Some of the error codes will be hard to trace back to any specific cause -- system clocking errors, for instance, or data framing errors. These can take a lot of time to trace. Reliable backups require a stable, reliable interface to the drive -- which partly explains why SCSI is still so common in the backup world.

If you need to use an AIT drive with a notebook, your best bet may be a drive from LaCie or another of the small number of companies that offer AIT drives with a FireWire interface. These would be a lot more notebook-friendly.