SCSI for my B&W Powermac G3 350

[SCSIJims]

Hello! I am new to the forum. Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Background:
I recently rescued a Blue & White 350 from an army of spiders and an exploding PRAM battery in the attic of a shed on my friend's property. It's cleaned up and beautiful...except that I snapped the zip drive bezel when trying to clean what looked like mold underneath. So, I am in the market for one of those, RAM sticks (OTC is out of stock), and an OTW SSD kit ($65? maybe after payday...)

Most importantly, I need to find a PCI SCSI card compatible with OS 9 to connect with various samplers with original SCSI.

THE QUESTIONS:
1. What SCSI cards are compatible with the G3 B&W running OS 9?

2. Are there such cards that have 2 SCSI ports? OR can you use some kind of splitter? I'd like to connect both my Akai s2000 and E-mu ESI 4000 at the same time, but they both have one original scsi port each, so must be on either ends of the chain. I've seen some dual cards with Ultra-wide, but I'd have to buy adapters which is pricey (on a budget).

I'd like the SCSI chain to look like this:
Emu ESI-4000-----Adtron PCMCIA Card Reader-----POWERMAC G3-----Panasonic LF-1600 PD Disk Drive-----Akai S2000

Please let me know if you have ideas/suggestions! 

[Mat]

There are houndrets of SCSI Cards for Macs PCI bussses! The very well Adaptec ones are still listed here: https://adaptec.com/de-de/support/_eol/index.php – scroll down to SCSI for Macintosh. The Microsemi page lists still all Adaptec products back to the 80ies, but not too long as the US Microchip (who bought them) doesn't anymore.

If your Akai and Emu have just one SCSI port, read their documentations/manuals carefully, and see if theay are not supposed to be the last device in the chain and perhaps even have terminator already included. In this case you can still always use 2 cheap SCSI cards (if you have 2 PCI slots free). For example two 2906s going down to 5 bucks in used condition.

[refinery]

i did a setup like this for a while with an emu E4x and a kurzweil on the other end. it worked, mostly, but there was a lot of hassles to jump through, including your mention of using adapters.
you're probably better off (and safer from a compatibility standpoint) of using two cheaper scsi cards than trying to do what I did and run everything off a single card.
also, what existing scsi cables do you have to work with? if you're on a budget its better to go with something that will work with what cables you already have

[SCSIJims]

WOW! Thank you both for the replies! It's wild to find somewhere that people know SCSI.

what existing scsi cables do you have to work with?

I laid out my cables and adapters and it looks like it would be best for the card connector to be DB-25 in order to be utilize what I have.

For example two 2906s going down to 5 bucks in used condition.

So, as Mat said, Adaptec 2906 (DB-25) would be a good fit...although I haven't seen any for $5! I am in the Washington DC Area of USA and I'm seeing cards start at around $30 with shipping. Anyone in North America got a spare..?


Also,

->if I'm running two separate cards can the chains "talk" to eachother? Can my s2000 access a drive that is on the other card? Or would each card have their own separate chain? Will Recycle 2.0 let me access both samplers in the same session? I'd think no on both account but I don't know

->Does it matter if I have mismatched cards?

I'm holding off on any other upgrades til I have a working scsi card that will play ball with the s2000...that machine is surprisingly more fussy with what it will SCSI with than my emu.

If your Akai and Emu have just one SCSI port, read their documentations/manuals carefully, and see if theay are not supposed to be the last device in the chain and perhaps even have terminator already included.

From ESI Manual:
"The ESI has an automatic system which ONLY supplies terminator power when it is NOT being supplied by another device...Make sure the system is correctly terminated - The ESI's should normally be on the ends of the SCSI chain. "
From s2000 manual:
"A chain of SCSI devices must be terminated at either end and terminating resistors are fitted tomost SCSI devices when you buy them. The S2000’s SCSI interface is terminated. It is most likely that the S2000 will be at one end of the chain and so must be left terminated."

Thanks again!!

[IIO]

->if I'm running two separate cards can the chains "talk" to eachother?

from what i rember about SCSI there can always only be one host.

for example you can control an EMU sampler from a MacOS9 application while at the same time you can read a CD from the second SCSI bus of the sampler.

"talking" between the host cards is only possible when you copy files from the host program from one disk to another or something like that. but SCSI is not a network protocol like firewire.

[DieHard]

We have covered a lot of this, so start here:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1712.0.html

Also, I have boxes of SCSI cards, if you need one, just pay shipping

[refinery]

regarding your one question with several busses, some, but not all, software will play nice with multiple scsi busses. As i recall, Recycle is one of them that will. MESA for Akais does as well. DSoundPro will not, but the later DSP Quattro will. its kind of hit and miss.

[IIO]

yes, one host and 2 samplers, that might work. not idea what the rule is...

[refinery]

well my E4XT has an option in the settings to "Ignore host on ID ____" which was what I had to use in my chain. On the Kurzweil, its fine as long as you don't try to "access" it... it shows up as an E4XT in the disk selection menu. But everything else on the chain is visible and usable to each sampler. I use this so I can share one SCSI2SD between the two devices.

[IIO]

i see, so all of that is possible when the devices support it.

[SCSIJims]

well my E4XT has an option in the settings to "Ignore host on ID ____" which was what I had to use in my chain. On the Kurzweil, its fine as long as you don't try to "access" it... it shows up as an E4XT in the disk selection menu. But everything else on the chain is visible and usable to each sampler. I use this so I can share one SCSI2SD between the two devices.

So, your chain looked like this?
KURZ---E4XT---SCSI2SD---MAC?
And E4XT is ignoring Kurz as host? Sorry, if I'm totally off. This is advanced SCSI!

Also @DieHard: I sent you a PM, but nothing is showing up in my sent box. Did you get it or did I do something wrong?

[FBz]

Might need to check this under you Profile settings…

[IIO]

and always watch out not to answer only to yourself when adding a second reply.

[refinery]

yeah it really comes down to just making sure the IDs are set right. Wiring-wise, its really whatever cables you have available to make it happen the most easily. The SCSI2SD makes things really easy to work with with its software-enabled termination, there was definitely some trial and error at the start.
In my setup, the E-Mu is set to ID0, with the ignore setting set to ID6. The Mac is ID7, and the SCSI2SD drives, 1x 18GB for the E-Mu and 4x 8GB for the Kurzweil, occupy IDs 1-5. The Kurzweil is set to ID6. The Kurzweil in the disk selection window always defaults to itself, so its easy to remember to just not go to ID0 in the menu. Not that it really matters, the Kurzweil plays nice with other samplers as long as you dont try to actually access them like a disk.

now for my akai, i keep that on its own scsi bus with its own scsi2sd, reason being that the older akai s-series OS can only handle hard drives of up to 540MB in capacity, and even that is broken down into 60mb partitions. because of this, i wanted to use all available IDs for drives so I have to switch out SD cards less often. On that chain the akai is set up as ID6 and IDs 0-5 are 540MB scsi partitions.

all of this is connected to an adaptec 39160. finding cables for it is a huge pain because it uses VHDCI connectors which are somewhat rare. For one of the busses, I use a PCI breakout cable connected to the internal connector, because it was way cheaper to find a 68-25pin scsi than it was to find a vhdci-25pin.
https://www.starte-cable.com/uploads/201817035/68-female-to-female-scsi-adapter-with-bracket32062864592.jpg

you can do some realllllly whackado stuff with your scsi chain with this card, but that is knowledge better saved for another time.