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What to do with PowerMac and SCSI card?

MIDI_EVIL

MIDI_EVIL

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 23, 2006
1,320
14
UK
I just purchased a PowerMac G4 Dual with an SCSI card.

I know nothing about SCSI and a quick look at Wikipedia tells me it's an old connection that was standard on Macs from the 80's onwards. I can hook up printers and scanners and create a network or server.

Now i bought the PowerMac with the intention of filling it with HD's and using it as storage, or a glorified external for my PowerBook.

What use could i get from the SCSI card in terms of connection to my powerbook.

By the way the PowerMac has Gigabit Ethernet, should i just use that as the connection between the two?

Cheers,
Rich.
 
Please help,

I need to set this up so i can use the PowerMac as storage server.

Thanks,
Rich.
 
fatsoforgotso said:
I just purchased a PowerMac G4 Dual with an SCSI card.

I know nothing about SCSI and a quick look at Wikipedia tells me it's an old connection that was standard on Macs from the 80's onwards. I can hook up printers and scanners and create a network or server.

Now i bought the PowerMac with the intention of filling it with HD's and using it as storage, or a glorified external for my PowerBook.

What use could i get from the SCSI card in terms of connection to my powerbook.

By the way the PowerMac has Gigabit Ethernet, should i just use that as the connection between the two?

Cheers,
Rich.
Click to expand...

I'll answer your last question first. Yes use Gigabit ethernet to connect the 2 machines.

I really don't understand the rest of your post other than getting the impression you don't know anything about SCSI. SCSI is a current technology used in most servers / workstations for storage. If your machine has a bootable SCSI card you can connect SCSI hard drives to it, it has the benefit of doing everything in hardware no CPU is used (like on an ATA box).

I've never seen SCSI printers (I'm not saying they didn't exist). I've also never seen a SCSI based network. Yes a lot of old scanners were SCSI, some probably still are.

Other than connecting your 2 machines together do you actually have any other questions? Feel free to ask as I work with SCSI and SCSI RAID all day everyday.
 
Very much appreciated. Thanks for responding.

I do have some questions.

So i can hook up harddrives to SCSI...?

Are they external or internal ?

Are the harddrives expensive ?

What sizes do they start at, and end at ?

Speed ?

How does it work in terms of the PowerMac recognising them? Will they appear on the desktop as an external would?

Thanks again,

Rich.
 
I do have some questions.

So i can hook up harddrives to SCSI...?

Yes - if your SCSI card is bootable

Are they external or internal ?

The can be either or both SCSI doesn't care

Are the harddrives expensive ?

Current U320 SCSI drives are more expensive than PATA or SATA drives at the same size

What sizes do they start at, and end at ?

The largest current drives I've seen are U320 SCSI 300 GBs

Speed ?

U320 SCSI is the current fastest drive, 15,000 RPM

How does it work in terms of the PowerMac recognising them? Will they appear on the desktop as an external would?

This all comes down to which SCSI card you have. If it is a bootable drive I'd expect it to work as normal. If it is just some cheap SCSI card that doesn't boot it may of just been for an external SCSI CD Burner or scanner. You need to provide more information about which card is in your machine.

Thanks again,

You're Welcome
 
Take the SCSI card out and flog it on eBay. Or shoot it. Or shoot pictures of yourself flogging it and sell those on eBay.

Short answer. Forget SCSI.

Buy a SerialATA PCI card with 4 internal SATA connectors (Firmtek Seritek series of cards) Then purchase nice, big, fast and CHEAP SATA drives to mount in your machine (I think you have room for 4 drives total?). Maxtor MaxLine III+ 16 Mb cache 5 year warranty would be good, in sizes 250 - 500 Gb

SCSI drives are OK but small and expensive and out of date compared to SATA.

The built in IDE (Parallel ATA) buss in your machine is slower than SATA, and is limited to how many hard drives you can install. Depending on the age of the G4, it may also limit you to drives of 120 Gb and under. Installing the SATA card solves all three problems.
 
CanadaRAM said:
SCSI drives are OK but small and expensive and out of date compared to SATA.
Click to expand...

You're kidding right? An U320 SCSI drive while expensive is no way out of date compared to SATA. Maybe the Mac above has some crappy cheap SCSI card but I'd take U320 SCSI RAID over SATA any day of the week if the option was there.
 
Riight, i see now.

I bought the PowerMac 450 Dual, and i noticed after i bought it, that it was with an SCSI card, i'm guessing it is the one for adding peripherals.

I don't have the PowerMac yet, but when i do, i will let you know what type of card it is.

Thanks all.

I've read more about SATA, isn't that just a PCI card that has 4 internal ports or more for additional harddrives?

The G4 is limited to 120 at the moment, i'd definately be interested in installing something that gives me the option to get much larger HD's.

Rich.
 
fatsoforgotso said:
I've read more about SATA, isn't that just a PCI card that has 4 internal ports or more for additional harddrives?
Click to expand...

If your machine is that old the SATA card would be a great option. SATA is the replacement for PATA (IDE if you don't know what you are talking about) drives. While nowhere as fast as U320 SCSI they are the cheapest performance drives you can buy. The Maxtor Maxline IIIs (mentioned above) or the Western Digital Raptors would be worth looking at. The Raptors are faster but have much less storage and cost more.
 
But won't the HD's be external? The SATA cards i've looked up all have '4 external ports'

Rich.
 
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