News SCSI isn't dead yet — new SSD for old or obsolete systems is a boon for retro computing fans

[Admin]

The new SCSIFlash-Fast is a 3.5-inch form factor drop-in replacement drive that can take the place of any ancient 68-pin or 80-pin connector SCSI HDD without the system even noticing.

SCSI isn't dead yet — new SSD for old or obsolete systems is a boon for retro computing fans : Read more

 

[TerryLaze]

In related news...if you want to backup an old scsi drive, now you can even without the help of an actual PC retro or otherwise.
Also search for "scsi to sd" on google ebay or wherever, there have been options out there for a long time.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EVAWWsaBUg

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

However, SSDL’s Sales & Marketing Director, James Hilken, points out that there are still systems used in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, medical, telecommunications, and other sectors “that were designed decades ago and were fitted with then state-of-the-art SCSI hard disk drives.” .”

Just like that air gapped train we saw a little while back.

Is odd they chose to add CF capability though since an M.2 is far cheaper.

 

[CaptainBrowncoat]

Just like that air gapped train we saw a little while back.

Is odd they chose to add CF capability though since an M.2 is far cheaper.

CF is hot-swappable, while m.2 generally isn't.

 

[bit_user]

I wonder if the low latency or high-throughput of a SSD could expose some bugs in software for these ancient machines. Basically, race conditions where the commands complete sooner than they used to, and therefore catch the software in a bad state. If so, it'd be funny if they had to fit these adapters with "turbo buttons" to artificially slow them down, like old PCs used to have.

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

I wonder if the low latency or high-throughput of a SSD could expose some bugs in software for these ancient machines. Basically, race conditions where the commands complete sooner than they used to, and therefore catch the software in a bad state. If so, it'd be funny if they had to fit these adapters with "turbo buttons" to artificially slow them down, like old PCs used to have.

No, they would not.

There's no such thing as a timer that was needed with programs that would not use the inbuild crystal and simply relied on CPU clockspeed.

SCSI was mainly enterprise oriented - compared to ATA for consumers it offered far better options, and more reliable too. But as disks age, and likely die after years of use, getting the parts would be more difficult and expensive over time.

SSD is no holy grail too - written bytes will affect those SSD's. I'm sure with maxed out read/write speeds it could actually be beneficial for very old servers. No latency in seeking anymore. Fire it up!

 

[Justin Goldberg]

No, they would not.

There's no such thing as a timer that was needed with programs that would not use the inbuild crystal and simply relied on CPU clockspeed.

SCSI was mainly enterprise oriented - compared to ATA for consumers it offered far better options, and more reliable too. But as disks age, and likely die after years of use, getting the parts would be more difficult and expensive over time.

SSD is no holy grail too - written bytes will affect those SSD's. I'm sure with maxed out read/write speeds it could actually be beneficial for very old servers. No latency in seeking anymore. Fire it up!

interesting. I heard from someone that when ssd drives first came out, that many disk controllers/bios needed updates because ssds used all of the ATA or scsi commands that were not used on older technology disks. But I'm not sure if they were referring to ide or SATA drives.

Also one problem with this device is that it appears that the SSD inside is not removable, although I'm sure it can be removed.

Fun fact, ide raid cards do exist.

 

[bit_user]

Fun fact, ide raid cards do exist.

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine worked for a startup that lost the RAID on one of their main servers, due to a bug in a 3Ware IDE RAID card.

Around the same time, I setup a server for the startup I worked at, but I avoided RAID. I wanted the simplest, most commodity setup possible, in hopes that it was the best-tested and most reliable (Linux wasn't nearly as popular, back then). So, our little source control server just had a single IDE drive and I did backups to a CD-R drive. I last saw that machine still running in a dark corner of a machine room, about 5 years ago.

 

[USAFRet]

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine worked for a startup that lost the RAID on one of their main servers, due to a bug in a 3Ware IDE RAID card.

Around the same time, I setup a server for the startup I worked at, but I avoided RAID. I wanted the simplest, most commodity setup possible, in hopes that it was the best-tested and most reliable (Linux wasn't nearly as popular, back then). So, our little source control server just had a single IDE drive and I did backups to a CD-R drive. I last saw that machine still running in a dark corner of a machine room, about 5 years ago.

Meanwhile, we have home users with 4x NVMe drives in RAID 0 for their game volume.

And then cry when things go sideways.