>I had expected exactly this (SCSI-USB converter) to appear in the market
>after the introduction of USB for Macs =AD after all it would be a solution
>which makes current USB-only devices available to the owners of older
>(and in fact recent) Apple models. Can it be that there is really no such
>device offered by any manufacturer?
I don't believe there is one, and I find it unlikely there will be. The
actual market is limited to those machines that have no PCI or Cardbus
slots, which effectively means older Powerbooks. Every desktop Mac since
the x100 series has PCI, and every non-USB Powerbook since the 2400 has
Cardbus. Old PC notebooks wouldn't particularly benefit from a SCSI
solution, and 68k Macs aren't really much of a consideration for current
new hardware (even if they were, a NuBus card would be a better approach).
Add to that the technical difficulty and the probable bulk of a SCSI-USB
convertor, and you see that there's not much incentive for a company to
develop one. Which doesn't mean that no one will be crazy enough to do it
anyway. :)
>This is very interesting. Would you be so kind and provide more specific
>product information? And: Were the devices you used compatible with
>Apple's "Easy Open" software? Did you experience any problems with
>reading/writing (formatting) DOS floppies?
As long as the filesystem on a device is accessible, PC Exchange (aka File
Exchange) will be able to mount it (for those filesystem types it
understands, currently MS-DOS FAT and Apple ProDOS). For floppies, which
have no partitioning information, you generally won't have a problem as
long as the driver controlling the device understands that it doesn't need
to look for a partition table (some drivers assume that since it's a SCSI
device, it must be partitioned). I found several removable SCSI drivers
that work with a floptical for both large partitioned disks and floppies;
the APS/Anubis one that came with my old Duo's drive worked particularly
well.
If you need to work with large disks that are partitioned with the lame MS
"fdisk" scheme (this includes i386 Linux drives), you'll need a driver that
can understand the partition table before PC Exchange can get a look at the
DOS filesystem within. I think recent versions of File Exchange do this, or
the extension included with a third-party product like FormatterFive will
work.
As for specific product info, for 20MB drives you'd probably do best to
search used-stuff places like eBay (currently there's a drive & PC SCSI
card there at $10). Keep in mind that these things perform only slightly
better than a floppy, and they're not much more reliable for long-term
storage (whether it's a new USB model or the older versions - it's still a
tarted up floppy disk). Technically the newer LS-120 version is called a
"laser/servo" (hence LS) mechanism and Imation has taken great pains to
distinguish it from the ill-fated "floptical" designation, but I can't
really see anything different about the basic spec other than the marketing
resurrection (corrections are welcomed if I'm wrong). There was a company
selling the LS-120 mechanism with a SCSI interface (and even a Mac-friendly
power eject model) a couple of years ago, but I can't recall the name or
URL and they've probably gone out of business.
Regardless, I wouldn't pay much for either type of device. If you need a
SCSI removable storage device you might look elsewhere for something
larger, faster, and more reliable; if you mainly need a floppy drive you
might just buy one for the Duo with a microdock. You may be able to find
230MB magneto-optical drives and disks on eBay for not too much, and while
they're not the fastest, they are faster than the LS-120 and a whole lot
more reliable. They don't read 1.44MB floppies, of course, but I find that
to be a vanishing need.
--
Marc Sira | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can't play with words, what good are they?"
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