[rescue] SCSI2 to IDE (was: Re: SCSI 50 to 68 to 80 pin thingies)

[Nate]

On Feb 22, 2011, at 9:35 PM, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:

> Saith J. Alexander Jacocks ...
>
>> In fact, I've never seen a 2.5" parallel
>> SCSI disk of > 500mb, from any OEM.
>
> Is SCA "parallel SCSI?"  Somewhere in deep storage I have a Seagate 36 GB
> 2.5" SCA-interface drive.  My impression is that they were made to go in
> "blade" servers, but didn't catch on.  It's the only 2.5" SCSI drive I've
> ever seen.

SCA is a form of 68-pin SCSI with the additional pins for power, and designed
to be hot-swappable.

While 2.5" SCA hard drives aren't super-common, there are a number of models
that were made.  However their usefulness to anyone looking for 2.5" SCSI hard
drives for older systems is going to be very limited for the following
reasons:

1) 2.5" SCA hard drives are to my knowledge all 15mm high, rather than the
12mm or 9.5mm you'd see in most notebook/portable applications for the 2.5"
form factor.

2) 2.5" SCA hard drives would need to be adapted to notebook SCSI cabling
somehow, which is typically a 40-pin IDC connector, and while it might be
possible with an SCA to 50-pin IDC connector SCSI adapter and then a 50-pin
IDC to 40-pin IDC adapter or cable, and adapt power from the IDC 40-pin to
4-pin Molex for the SCA adapter, you'd have a mess of adapters and cables that
would be unlikely to fit in anything looking for a 2.5" SCSI drive.

3) 2.5" SCA hard drives are typically 10k RPM and are likely to put out far
more heat than any notebook/portable system would expect a 2.5" drive to put
out (assuming you could somehow shoehorn it in).

- Nate