A brief disclaimer (I'd better be safe than sorry): I am in no way associated with Belkin Components, Syquest, Adaptec, or any other other company mentioned here, except (sometimes) as a customer. What I say is my thoughts only, and may not be 100% technically accurate (but correct as far as I know).
During the summer of 1997 I bought one of Belkin's Parallel to SCSI adapter cables, and a Syquest EZFlyer 230MB removable hard drive (SCSI model) to use with my computer. I was using MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11 at the time, on a Pentium-60. With this setup, I could connect the SCSI drive to the parallel port, and also use the drive on other PC's without having to open them up to insert SCSI cards. I could have bought the parallel-port model of the EZFlyer, but I felt that would have limited me later on. I wouldn't be able to use it on other types of computers, such as a Mac or even my Atari ST. I thought I might be installing Linux on my PC at some time in the future, and I didn't think the parallel port drive would work in Linux (although I later found out that Linux drivers do exist, but are not Syquest-supported, and you cannot boot from the parallel port through LILO). If I later decided to get a SCSI card, the SCSI drive would work faster than the parallel-port model (although the parallel-port model is supposed have faster data transfers than the Belkin cable).
I also spent a while deciding what type of removable drive to get. I figured it would be cheaper in the long run to use cartridges than to get a larger internal drive. (Internal hard drives, however, are getting cheaper every day it seems) I felt that Iomega's 100 Meg ZIP drives were going to be phased out in the near future, and 100 Meg is rather small anyway. Larger-capacity drives were also available, but they cost more than I wanted to spend. Cartridges for these high-capacity drives are fairly expensive too. I chose the EZFlyer 230 MB drive because it had a good balance of lower cost with higher capacity. Nowadays, even 230 MB is at the low end of the market, but it's still quite adequate for what I'm using it for. (If I was buying a drive today, I'd go for a higher capacity model since some now cost less than what I paid for the EZFlyer.) I have a cartridge for things like WordPerfect. One is for general-purpose sound and graphics. I've used one for hard-drive backup (removable drives aren't designed for that task, but they do a reasonable job). Finally, I have one for Atari stuff. I have a couple of Atari ST emulators, and lots of software (I've used these 16-bit Ataris for the last twelve years - that's over half my life!) Another reason I looked favorably toward Syquest is that Syquest's 44MB drive was very popular among ST owners, and the drives were highly recommended.
When I first tried to get them to work, I had problems. Read/write errors were fairly common, about half the time when copying 20 MB sound files to/from the EZFlyer. After trying everything I could think of, I sent an e-mail to Syquest's support address. They thought it was a cabling problem, and suggested using well-shielded cables and cables which were as short as possible. (When I bought the drives, the SCSI-1 (large centronics) connector on Belkin's cable did not match the 25-pin DB connector on the Syquest drive, so I had bought a fairly long and cheap cable with the right ends). I then bought a small adapter which converted the SCSI-1 connector to a micro-50 SCSI-2 connector, to match the end of the cable which shipped with the drive. This cable has the mini 50-pin connector at one end and the DB25 on the other end to connect to the drive. This cable was short and thick (which probably meant had it had a lot of shielding). This new setup worked with no errors, and I returned the cheap cable I originally bought. Even though the technical limit on the total length of SCSI cables is about 6 metres, shorter is better. It's also a good idea not to go for the cheapest cable you can find. SCSI is a fairly high-performance system. This high-performance means that good SCSI adapters and connectors can get quite expensive. Fortunately I didn't need to buy much.
This new setup worked reasonably well. I didn't measure the transfer rates, but it says on the Parallel to SCSI box that the cable can transfer data at over 600,000 bytes per second. In everyday situations, programs like WordPerfect 6.1 loaded off the drive fairly quickly. I could save and record sound files at high sampling rates (44.1 kHz) with no problems. The drive had to be turned on and Belkin's ASPI drivers had to be loaded in order for the printer to print (which was inconvenient because sometimes, if we didn't think we'd need the drive, we wouldn't turn it on.) The other strange thing was that when the ASPI driver initialized the cable (while booting up the computer), our printer (a Canon BJC-4200) would 'suck' a page under the print head ready to start printing. (Nothing would print on this page, but we couldn't print anything until we form-feeded the blank page out again). As a result, we'd usually just turn on the printer after the cable driver was loaded.
Belkin's cable comes with a Parallel pass-through port, so you can still connect a printer to the parallel port when the SCSI devices are connected. To quote the box, "And, we've included a Parallel pass through port so your printer always stays connected." The box also says, "Windows 95 Compatible!" After reading both of these, I thought that I would be able to access the drive while printing under Windows 95, as I had under Windows 3.11. I was wrong. In fact, I found later that Belkin's homepage (in the driver downloads section) states:
"Do not try to print and access the scsi chain at the same time. This could cause the system to become unstable."
To be specific, sometimes I could access the drive while printing. It seemed that about 75% of the time I could successfully print from WordPerfect (which was installed on the Syquest drive) without things stopping working. The rest of the time, the drive activity light on the EZFlyer would stay on, and Windows 95 would be unable to access the drive. I'd get "Error reading/writing to drive E" blue-screen messages. Sometimes Windows would freeze, give a black screen, make me wait about a minute before mouse action would return, or just work really slowly. Often, Windows would tell me the disk was not formatted and would ask me if I wanted to format it. In rare cases after a lockup, after ejecting the cartridge and re-inserting it a couple of times, I could get things working again. Most of the time however, I'd need to reboot. (I don't think I ever lost my work, because I'd save it immediately before printing. WordPerfect also does an auto-backup, and gives you the opportunity to load it if WordPerfect isn't exited normally.)
I should clarify: Belkin's adapter cable does work. I had no problems with it under Windows 3.11, and as long as I didn't print and access the Syquest drive at the same time, it worked fine. If I didn't have a printer connected (for example, if I was using a laptop 'on the road'), or was using a SCSI scanner (and didn't try to scan and print at the same time - an unlikely occurrence), it would have been a good investment for me. Unfortunately, I had bought something which didn't do what I needed to do. By the time I found this out however, it was too late to return it.
Finally, after putting up with these problems for a few months (and staying up until 2:00 in the morning one night after spending three hours trying to print an assignment due later that day), I decided I'd get a SCSI card. I wasn't pleased that I could have saved myself the cost of Belkin's cable by buying the card in the first place, but c'est la vie. I decided I'd go with a very well-known and industry-standard type of card. I'd get one of high quality that would last me several years, rather than something I'd need to replace again a couple of years from now. After talking with people, looking in a few books, and several hours reading materials from manufacturers web pages, I eventually decided to get an Adaptec AHA2940 Ultra Wide card. It inserts into a PCI slot inside the computer. I have heard good things about Adaptec's products, and they seem to be one of the most popular manufacturers.
On a side note, one of the key advantages of businesses being on the Internet (in my opinion) is the customer-service aspect. In Adaptec's case, I could look at all the specifications of each item they sell, and could choose the one that suited me best. I could even read through the instruction manuals of the various products. I could download the latest drivers, and get customer support if I needed it. A similar thing held for Syquest's drive. Personally, I doubt the Internet will ever be a great advertizing medium. I'm also a bit uneasy about buying things directly over the Internet, even though there are now supposedly 'safe' ways of doing so. (It can be difficult to return things or get help.) I'd prefer to go to a store and buy something directly, if possible. Maybe it's just me...?
Anyway, installing the AHA2940UW went fairly well. I had a hard time making Windows 95 recognize the card (I had to put the drivers onto a disk and then install from the disk, rather than using Windows' 'built-in' drivers or installing them from a directory on the hard drive). I'm not sure what was wrong there, but everything worked eventually. I still have MS-DOS also installed on my computer (I press F8 and choose "Previous Version of MS-DOS"), and installing the DOS driver was very simple (added one line to CONFIG.SYS). One thing about Adaptec's DOS driver (ASPI8DOS.SYS) is that it seems to use a fair bit of conventional memory, so I needed to adjust a few other things to get some older DOS games to work correctly afterwards. (I could also just comment out the ASPI8DOS line as well).
I'll talk about SCSI and the AHA2940UW (Ultra Wide) a bit. "Ultra" is a newer form of the SCSI protocol, which can transfer data faster than the older protocols. Looking at SCSI drive manufacturer's web pages (Seagate's and Western Digital's in particular), I noticed most of the SCSI drives they now sell are "Ultra". "Wide" means that the drive/controller uses 16 bits to transfer data, and can support 16 devices on the SCSI chain, including the controller. The connector on the card and drives is also wider (68 pins rather than 50). Older (and more common) "Narrow" devices only use 8 bits, support 8 devices, and have a smaller connector (50 pins). In order to use a narrow device (like the EZFlyer) on a wide card, you need a "Wide to Narrow" adapter, which is a plug with the wide connector on one end and the narrow on the other, and which terminates the wide pins. (SCSI devices are 'daisy chained' together. Each device has two connectors, and each device is plugged into the back of another in a series, forming a chain of devices. Termination is required at the ends of the chain, which stops signals from 'bouncing' off the unconnected end of a device.)
For the EZFlyer drive, using the AHA2940UW is quite a bit of overkill. The card can transfer data at over five times the rate that the drive can handle (based on reading the specs in the instruction manual). As I said earlier though, this card should be able to handle whatever I want to do with it for many years to come. If someday I want to get another SCSI drive (like the Seagate/Western Digital ones I mentioned earlier), this card should handle it no-problem. In the future if I get what today seems like a very powerful computer, this card will still work with it. I don't really mind spending a little extra now for power I won't use until later. Computer stuff becomes old so quickly nowadays, but I'm trying to make my investment last as long as possible. I've had my Ataris for over a decade now (and still use them occasionally). Maybe I'll be using my current computer (or parts of it) ten years from now (wish me luck!)
Anyway' that's about all I have to say (I do carry on, don't I?) Here are a few references, with some notes for some of them.
An article about the Atari and Syquest is in Start Magazine, March 1990, pp 82-88. ICD, Inc. sells Atari SCSI adapters.