SCSI question

[rml]

I am helping my friend to buy a SCSI CDRW.

He wants to buy a Plextor SCSI cdrw but the website only stated it requires
"Ultra"

Does "Ultra" implies 68pin ultra wide?

What is the best card for this drive?
How much? where to buy it?


Thanks for all your input.

 

[KiNeL]

Unless he has some overriding reason for wanting SCSI I would advise against it.

Until recently I would have give exactly the opposite advice but IDE drives have more than caught up now and there's really no reason at all left to go for SCSI. Apart from the fact that the SCSI Plex is considerably more expensive than the IDE you will also need to spend quite a bit on a good card to do it justice.

I don't know what they mean by "Ultra" it means nothing unless they mean Ultra Wide but even then it makes no sense because there is no such thing as an Ultra Wide SCSI CDR or CDRW.

 

[esung]

Ultra means Ultra SCSI, and by context it means Ultra Narrow SCSI-2(50 pin), which can transfer data at 20MB/s over the narrow bus.
but Ultra SCSI is also SCSI-2 compatible, you just lost half of the bandwidth, which is still more then enough for the 12x burning job, in the case that you can not synchronize ultra SCSI (CDROM, old HD, Scanner).
Ultra Wide could transfer 40MB/s on the wide bus. (a plain wide SCSI-2 bus can transfer at 20MB/s)

Pretty much all the decent SCSI card supports ultra SCSI-2, and it depends on your need, do you plan to attach HDs later, and what type of configuration. Tekram make decent SCSI controllers if you don't
want to shell out more money for higher priced Adaptec.