Want Adaptec SCSI card that will work in desktop

dosbox

I have been looking around for a cheap SCSI card that will work in a desktop. the main reason I want to do this, is for the novelty of:

-A) Installing old OSes from a SCSI CD-ROM Drive
-B) Using an external floppy drive to read and write disks for old computers (PC and Atari ST{Can be used with different emulators}).
-C) Maybe find an old SCSI HD and use it.

I mainly intend to do this with an older custom desktop pc with a i440BX chipset and a PII CPU.

I am wondering if this one is good.

SomeGuy

For PCI, the AHA-2940U/UW is pretty much a standard, and is very well supported across many OSes.

But this is not a floppy controller. Did you have some specific external floppy drive in mind? To read/write non DOS formats with a PC, you would need to connect a floppy drive to your motherboard's FDC.

Before diving in to anything SCSI, you should familiarize yourself with the different SCSI plug sizes and adapters. There are a lot!

But if your are looking for random things to plug in to a SCSI card, I would recommend the Iomega SCSI Zip-100 drive. Any OS that recognizes the SCSI card can use the Zip drive as generic removable storage.

dosbox

I do not have a floppy drive in mind yet.

As for the ZIP drive, I used to have a Iomega Zip drive that I swear was IDE, but I lost it someplace. A drive is useless without disks.

Also I need to find a place with info on the different types of plugs and adapters that a noob to SCSI can understand.

TCPMeta

Almost everything has been tossed as a SCSI device. Last I checked you can even use USB on a SCSI chain with a special adapter.

There are Floptical drives that are 1.44MB compatable that wre SCSI but cost a arm and a leg. If you need a floppy drive for just reading old disks on a modern system just get a external USB floppy drive.

Zip 100 drives came in SCSI, IDE and Parallel. Older Macs used SCSI and when the Zip drive came out Iomega had a external SCSI drive for the Mac market but also PC compatible.

SCSI-2 is the most common I come into contact with. Uses a 50pin ribbon cable and the 50pin D-SUB oe 50pin high-denisty external connections.

I have this card in my main desktop. Works like a champ in Linux. Haven't tried it in Windows.

dosbox

TCPMeta wrote:

I have this card in my main desktop. Works like a champ in Linux. Haven't tried it in Windows.

what is the oldest kernel version you know would work with this card?

TCPMeta

My guess would be 2.4.26, never tried anything lower. I'm using 2.6.39 currently.

bootes

You can find many scsi adapters using the standard 32bit 33Mhz pci just be sure the card you get will work universally with 5volts cause some are 3volt. Also if you plan on using this scsi card as a boot device for your operating system, and there are other devices on the 32bit 33Mhz pci bus you will have reduced performance on scsi, as the bandwidth on a 32bit 33mhz is 133MB/s. Ultra160 scsi is 160MB/s and Ultra320 scsi is 320MB/s.
Most of the time I shop online at ServerSupply.com they have a wide selection of adaptor cards.