Re: Does SCSI still exist?
Ah, the nostalgia. :)
I skipped the 10MB drives, and went straight to 20MB. What's more, two of them. Yup, 40 whole MB's. :eek: And this was at home. I was dabbling in paid work from home, but didn't really have the time. But sooner or later, everybody trying to do a full time job while building a business hits the same wall - poop or get off the potty - give up or go full time.
But even before the PC, I was spending on Apple IIe stuff, when 140KB floppies were fancy, and state of the art was a 5-disc autochanger at 1.2MB per disc. Fancy, huh? :D
I still have that Apple gear, bought in the 80s, and it still works. As for what I was doing, well, it's mixed. Officially, pre-sale support (plus a bit of post sale) for financial systems to the City, banks, building societies, etc. Privately, systems consultancy for small but forward-thinking businesses - people with Chartered Accountancy backgrounds and computer expertise weren't thick on the ground. Included in the official stuff was spending a fair bit of time in the US in the fqctory and with dev teams and product managers, including evaluating early versions of Windows and, yes, GEM. And, everything from Turbo Pascal to dBase and Paradox. Did some programming with the databases too, and though I was trained up on a variety of languages, from Algol, Fortran and COOBOL forward, and did write code from time to time, it was always an adjunct to rather than central to my work. I wrote demo stuff, for instance, and testing code, by which I mean code to drive/test new hardware.
Re: Does SCSI still exist?
Oh yes, the Apple II - that was a fun machine. I did some experiments with a synchro to digital interface card (not many will know what a synchro is) driving it from the IIe. Couldn't get rotation past the first 90 degrees, and then discovered to the two most significant bits on the interface card were duff - that was an expensive fault! I think we had some sign to to digital interfaces too, the plan was to drive heavy macinery with synchro based servo mechanisms digitally, but we didn't get that far.
Digital optical encoders have pretty much rendered synchro obsolete, although I think they are still used in avionics for thinks like altimeter displays and position feedback of control surfaces.
Re: Does SCSI still exist?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Saracen
I doubt SCSI was ever common in home use - too expensive.
At one stage it was quite common for CD Burners...and the cards were getting quite cheap. I am talking about the 90s though!
Re: Does SCSI still exist?
Just remembered, I had a SCSI Zip drive - came with an Adaptec card! Plugged it into my Linux system and off it went / all the SCSI drivers were in place as SCSI drivers were included in *nix systems very early on (as befitted a high performance OS)
Re: Does SCSI still exist?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
shaithis
At one stage it was quite common for CD Burners...and the cards were getting quite cheap. I am talking about the 90s though!
From memory, in the early days, you had a choice of SCSI, SCSI or SCSI for CD burners. I had a Yamaha CDR100, which came in at £3k (generously including SCSI card) and another £1k or so for the (DOS-based) software to drive it. And as I said earlier, £15 per blank disk.
I was so pleased when softward like Nero came out.