Australian PC World - Add a card for SCSI peripherals

Add a card for SCSI peripherals

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It's pronounced "scuzzy", but SCSI, the Small Computer System Interface, is anything but. Instead, it's the leading standard for connecting high-performance PC peripherals, offering several advantages over the more common EIDE interface.
A single SCSI add-in card can run virtually any combination of up to seven peripherals. SCSI peripherals, especially hard disks, are usually faster than their EIDE counterparts. And both the add-in card and peripherals are intelligent enough to do their own data processing, which lightens the workload on your CPU.
The downside is that SCSI cards and peripherals are more expensive than EIDE devices. And they've earned their reputation for being hard to install, so read the manuals carefully. Here's an overview of installing SCSI cards.

1. Get the card. You'll see many types of SCSI cards. The cheapest ones will support any peripheral except a hard drive. To connect a hard drive, buy a card that supports hard drives with its own BIOS. And if your PC has PCI slots, get a PCI SCSI card ($250 and up) for top performance.
2. Check the IDs. The SCSI card and each peripheral you connect to it needs a unique ID number ranging from 0 to 7. SCSI cards usually come from the factory set as ID 7. Numbers don't have to be sequential. If you'll be booting from a SCSI hard disk, it's best to set the disk's ID at 0 or 1. External peripheral IDs are usually set with a switch on the back of the case; internal peripheral IDs are set with jumpers.
3. Terminate the ends. Think of the cable that connects a SCSI card and peripheral as a pipe that has to be capped at both ends to hold water. In SCSI nomenclature, each cap -- usually a switch, plug, or jumper -- is called a terminator. Note that if you have internal and external peripherals, the card is in the middle and should not be terminated.
4. Install card and cables (Windows 95). Remove the PC cover and plug in the SCSI card. Install any internal peripherals, and connect a ribbon cable from the peripherals to the SCSI card. If you have external peripherals, connect the cable from the nearest one to the SCSI card, then attach any additional ones to each other via cables.
5. Install card and cables (Windows 3.x). Install hardware as in Step 4 -- after you've selected proper settings. A SCSI card requires its own interrupt, I/O port, and (sometimes) DMA channel. Some SCSI cards are set up with jumpers or DIP switches, some via the BIOS, and some with utility software -- read the card's manual carefully.
6. Install software drivers. Windows 95 should automatically install software required for the card. Windows 3.x doesn't require additional software. Hard drives need no additional software, but most other SCSI peripherals require device-specific drivers, and often they need an Advanced SCSI Programming Interface driver for the card as well.
- Stan Miastkowski

Category: Hardware
Issue: Jul 1997
Pages: 172