Hey, how are you? Everything all right in your world? Good. Me too.
Picture this: Sicily… no, no, no, try again. You’ve been a Mac user since the dawn of time. You’ve always tried to keep ahead of the curve (within budgetary constraints, of course) when it came to Mac equipment, but you’ve had to use an older Mac now for the past 3 years. You’ve got a nice flatbed scanner that you’ve been using and an external Zip drive. Life is good. Now you want to move into the new millenium and get one of those new, fancy, shmancy Graphite iMacs with the DVD player. What a fashion statement! You order it from one of the catalog companies and it arrives at your door. You are so pumped! It looks so cool. No floppy drive? Who cares! You’re gonna use your Zip drive anyway. You plug your keyboard and power cable in and you reach for your scanner and… what’s this? No SCSI port!?
Now, you may think that this article is outdated and I’m too late to talk about this, but some of you need to be prepared for this little surprise. Dat’s why I’m here.
“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch.” Ah yes, the era of USB. Universal Serial Bus, who’d have thunk it? You can plug and unplug devices while the system is running. It’s a beautiful thing, but what are you gonna do about the scanner and the Zip drive? Sure, you could buy new ones (except for those pesky budgetary constraints) or you could just throw them away… yeah, right… or you could take some sage advice and simply get the appropriate adapters. A USB to SCSI adapter, that is.
I did some looking around and found that there are a few companies that make USB to SCSI adapters. Ariston Technologies, Microtech International, and Xircom-Entrega are some of the prominent names. Of these three, I like Xircom the best. The adapter is called “Portgear” and it will allow you to connect up to 7 SCSI devices in a daisy-chain and plug into one USB port. Ah, bliss! I have installed one of their adapters and it came with all the right goodies, like current drivers and an oh-so-easy-to-follow manual. Note: Always read the manual…;^)
After checking with the different online catalog companies, I also found that they have the most competitive pricing (right around $65.00). I did go to Xircom’s website but got kinda lost. I did a search on “USB to SCSI adapter” and ended up with almost 1000 related documents. Too much.
Now, you can get the scanner and Zip drive connected to your fancy, shmancy Graphite iMac with the DVD player that plays “A Bug’s Life!” Can’t wait to get mine!
“If I were a rich man…”
Catcha L8r, Eddie
Ed Tobey
edtobey@hotmail.com
Website mentioned:
http//www.sonnettech.com
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