Selected Questions and Answers For BCS and Other Jobs.

8.5. SCSI

SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. SCSI is pronounced as “scuzzy”. It has the following characteristics: 

Click here to Download the book. 

 SCSI Supports 

 CD-ROM drive 

 WORM (Write Once, Read Many times) optical disks 

 Optical scanners 

 21 MB+ ‘super’ floppies 

 Bernoulli Box cartridge storage devices 

 Various tape drives 

 Up to 7 devices can be connected with the cable 

 The newest SCSI standard, SCSI-3, supports 24 MB/s (Mega Byte per second) data transfer rate  Drive controllers are located with respective drives and another special controller connected with the motherboard called the host adapter controls all the controllers in drives. 

8.6. IDE 

IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics. It is also a modified version of ST506. To get a more reliable but cheaper interface technology, IDE is designed. It has the following characteristics: 

 Controller is not connected with the drive by a cable but it is just put on to the drive. 

 IDE cable is 40 wire. 

 IDE cable runs directly to PC bus, but it is not directly connected to the PC bus. A buffer exists between the PC bus and the 40-pin cable connector. 

8.7. EIDE 

EIDE stands for Enhanced IDE. It is designed by Western Digital. It has the following characteristics:  Similar to IDE, the controller is built in the drive.

 It supports LBA translation, which supports drives larger than 504 MB. It allows the BIOS to support drives up to 8 GB.

 EIDE offers higher data transfer rate.

 Supports CD-ROM and tape drives.

 EIDE is the most popular drive interface today.