Adaptec’s SlimSCSI Review
Adaptec PowerDomain SlimSCSI 1480 UltraSCSI PC Card, $129.95
By Todd Kelly — toddk@home.com
Now that Apple has removed the SCSI port from the latest PowerBook G3, it seems that the SCSI era has effectively come to an end — or has it? Adaptec (
www.adaptec.com) has released a PC card that allows your legacy SCSI devices to be accessed by your PowerBook — the SlimSCSI 1480.I have several older SCSI devices: A zip drive, a CD writer, a scanner, and a 4GB drive that I use for small backups. I wanted to keep using them for as long as possible, and wasn’t keen on investing in new devices when my older ones worked just fine, thank you. Enter the Adaptec SlimSCSI, savior of the SCSI fan. The SlimSCSI is an UltraSCSI PC card with an UltraSCSI cable on one end.
Setup is simple — connect all of your SCSI devices to the cable, turn them on, and insert the card. After installing the software, you can access the devices. The speed is surprisingly fast - up to 20 MByte/sec. If you are used to the speed of an older PowerBook’s SCSI, the UltraSCSI speed of this card will blow you away. Add to this that the SlimSCSI card can be ejected and inserted whenever you like (provided that the SCSI devices are powered on), and you essentially have hot-swappable SCSI devices. Just remember that the devices cannot be disconnected from each other while powered on.
This setup is not without its quirks, however. My external drive doesn’t always mount on startup — requiring me to mount it using the SCSI Probe control panel. And be sure to get the latest drivers from the Adaptec web site. I had plenty of crashes under OS9 until I downloaded the new drivers.
Another minor annoyance is the cable itself. Adaptec includes a 12″ cable with the smaller UltraSCSI connector. All of my SCSI devices have 50- or 25-pin connectors. Adaptec does offer replacement cables on their web site, but at $50 each, I decided to pass them up in favor of a $14 adapter from cablesonline.com. The adapter converts the UltraSCSI connector to a standard 50-pin connector.
For the reasonable price of $129.95, the SlimSCSI card solved all of my legacy SCSI connection issues, and saved me from spending more money on replacing what are still very usable devices. Plus, I can hot connect my devices at will, which is a huge benefit over using them with a traditional SCSI bus that required the shutting down of the computer. If you need SCSI on your new PowerBook, this card is worth a serious look.
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