My SCSI drives have 80-pin connector!? How do I use them?

Decker87

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Nov 19, 2004
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Hi. I have 7 SCSI drives with the same type of connector. I think it is a SCA2 80-pin connector. Here is a page for one of the drives: http://discountechnology.com/Seagate-ST318404LC-SCSI-Hard-Drive?sc=9

I am so frustrated. I bought a huge grab box of SCSI stuff, just to have not a single cable or adapter fit anything. The connectors are trapezoids that are the widest connections I have ever seen. What in the world do I need to buy to get these things working? Was SCSI invented by monkeys?

EDIT: Is ebay item # 5126408689 what I need?
 
You have a couple of options.

1. Adapters that will break out the SCA 80 pin connector into a 68 pin SCSI connector, a 4-pin molex power connector, and jumpers to set the SCSI ID and other options. Example.

2. An enclosure meant for SCA SCSI drives. Example - Enlight EN-8721 SCSI enclosure. That enclosure accepts up to 5 drives, and puts them in the space of 3 5.25" bays in your case. There is one 68 pin SCSI connector on the back of the enclosure to connect to the SCSI card. The enclosure provides all drives with power, cooling, assignes all ID numbers, and provides termination.
 


No, but it requires a modicum of intelligence to use it.

By the way - you do have a SCSI adapter card I assume?
 
SCA - hot swap drives. Nice idea, but a bit specialized for an into to SCSI. Get the enclosure and a cheap RAID card and have at it. At least you'll be able to see what hot-swapping is all about.

BTW - who wants some 9gig SCA's? Got a double handful of them and don't want to bother with Ebay'ng them. Still replacing the 36's with 146's (one per month) on the secondary server at home, so don't have any bigger to give away yet.