68 PIN SCSI Drive

[seven7]

Is there anything wrong with using a 80 PIN SCSI drive with a 68 pin converter? my friend said it was bad.. what do you say? And what is the difference anyway?

 

[bacillus]

if it's an lvd hdd, make sure the adaptor you get is lvd compatible!

 

[corkyg]

Check here for a really good answer on the SCA-80 connector.

SCSI

More SCSI

 

[pm]

Reasons not to get an 80-pin SCA drive and use an 80-pin SCA to 68-pin SCSI adapter:

1. Adds one more point of failure. They are simple devices, usually having no active components, but still, it is one more thing that could possibly go wrong.
2. They fall off much more easily than a standard cable connection. Probably picking up the computer and shaking it wouldn't be enough, but it'd be easy to partially knock if off while doing something else within the case
3. They add somewhere between $10 and $30 to the price of the drive depending on where you buy them and what kind of adapter you buy.
4. 80-pin drives can be harder to sell used. The 80-pin SCSI corporate market tends to only want new components. The home market doesn't use hot-swappable backplanes and tends to want 68-pin. Which isn't to say that they are hard to sell, but that you may have to knock a couple of bucks off and throw in the adapter to make the sale.
5. These adapters, particularly the really cheap $10 ones, have far less shielding than typical computer PCB boards and tend to be unregulated FCC components and thus can, in rare instances, interfere with other components containing analog parts such as video, audio cards and network cards. This can particularly be true of TV tuner cards. It's not likely to be a problem but it's possible.

None of these are big deals except the last, and this is rare.

 

[Hanpan]

If you buy a high quality adapter you should be ok but do be aware of the extra points pm mentioned.

Sometimes however 80pin drives are easier to find and cheaper than their 68pin counterparts...