Acard 7722 ATAPI to SCSI converter

[nicholas]

Anyone had any luck getting one of these to work in a miggy?

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=37&prod_no=AEC-7722&type1_title=SCSIDE%20Bridge&type1_idno=2

I have one of these and a 50pin to 68pin adaptor and I can't get the A3000 to see any device I attach to it.

[mongo]

Anyone had any luck getting one of these to work in a miggy?

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=37&prod_no=AEC-7722&type1_title=SCSIDE%20Bridge&type1_idno=2

I have one of these and a 50pin to 68pin adaptor and I can't get the A3000 to see any device I attach to it.

Does your 50 to 68 pin adapter convert to LVD signaling or is it just a passive adapter?

If it's just a passive adapter it won't work, and you might have killed your SCSI-IDE adapter.

[nicholas]

Does your 50 to 68 pin adapter convert to LVD signaling or is it just a passive adapter?

If it's just a passive adapter it won't work, and you might have killed your SCSI-IDE adapter.

I'm assuming it's just a passive adapter.

When I connect the Acard to my PC I get a warning about insufficient termination.

[nicholas]

Does your 50 to 68 pin adapter convert to LVD signaling or is it just a passive adapter?

If it's just a passive adapter it won't work, and you might have killed your SCSI-IDE adapter.

Could you recommend which 68 to 50 pin adapter I should buy please?

[nicholas]

I'm assuming it's just a passive adapter.

When I connect the Acard to my PC I get a warning about insufficient termination.

I should add that the Adaptec SCSI BIOS utils detect whatever devices I attach to the acard correctly despite the lack of adequate termination.

[nicholas]

Correction:

The ACard has an female 68pin LVD80 SCSI connector, my SCSI controller has a male 50pin Ultra-SCSI connector.

The 100MB SCSI drive already in my A3000 seems to run fine with a cable that has two female and one male connector and no terminator on the cable.

So I think I need, a cable that is male 68pin to female 50pin with some magic trickery inside it as Mongo suggested.

Or shall I use the cable I have already that came with the A3000 and it's 100MB drive and buy a 50pin female terminator?

SCSI is far too confusing for my little brain. I hope the NatAmi will have SATA! :lol:

[nicholas]

This is the ATAPI to SCSI adapter:

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-product.jsp?prod_no=AEC-7722&type1_title=SCSIDE%20Bridge&idno_no=37

This is the 68pin to 50pin adapter:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390284252944&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Now then, with some jumper fiddling on the Acard I have managed to get my Adaptec controller to detect it as device number 6 on the SCSI bus.

When I unplug it from the PC and connect it to the A3000 onboard SCSI it is not detected in the early startup screen nor within hdtoolbox from the Install 3.1 disk.

Any ideas?

[nicholas]

:bump:

[Dandy]

Anyone had any luck getting one of these to work in a miggy?

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=37&prod_no=AEC-7722&type1_title=SCSIDE%20Bridge&type1_idno=2

I have one of these and a 50pin to 68pin adaptor and I can't get the A3000 to see any device I attach to it.



Hmmmmm - I'm using two of these ACARD Ultra Wide SCSI-to-IDE Bridges (http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb0101.jsp?type1_idno=2&type2_idno=7) - one for a 160gB IDE HD and the other for my IDE DVD-RW...
Both are working like a charm since years in my A4000 with the CSPPC onboard UW-SCSI hostadaptor.

[Dandy]

Correction:

The ACard has an female 68pin LVD80 SCSI connector, my SCSI controller has a male 50pin Ultra-SCSI connector.



Hmmmm - why don't you use this AEC-7720U Ultra SCSI-IDE bridge (http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=23&prod_no=AEC-7720U&type1_title=SCSIDE Bridge&type1_idno=2)?

AFAIK UW-SCSI has the 68 pin connectors and UW-SCSI specification is different from SCSI-II specification.

So using the one you have might cause incompatibilities.

Get the proper bridge for your SCSI host adaptor and you don't need this passive 50/68 pin converter any more.

You can download the pdf-manual here: http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fc0101.jsp



The 100MB SCSI drive already in my A3000 seems to run fine with a cable that has two female and one male connector and no terminator on the cable.

So I think I need, a cable that is male 68pin to female 50pin with some magic trickery inside it as Mongo suggested.

Or shall I use the cable I have already that came with the A3000 and it's 100MB drive and buy a 50pin female terminator?

SCSI is far too confusing for my little brain.



I don't know about the A3000 SCSI - I have the UW-SCSI on my CSPPC.

For this a basic SCSI chain has to look this way:

active Terminator --- CSPPC UW-SCSI host --- HD1 --- HD2 --- active Terminator.

The internal termination of the drives is switched off with jumper(s), of course.

I need two active terminators as the host on the CSPPC does not provide any termination.

This might be different with the A3000 SCSI - I don''t know.

"Y"-like cables are not allowed for any SCSI.



I hope the NatAmi will have SATA! :lol:



I would expect SATA still requiring a lot of CPU power in contrast to any SCSI.

So I would always prefer SCSI for my classic Amiga over any IDE/SATA/PATA or whatever - just because of the better overall system performance.

What a huge difference it was (performance-wise) when I switched from IDE to to the UW-SCSI!

[Xanxi]

I have two of these adapters. The 50 pins version that works like a charm in my A2000 and the 68 pins UW version. I bought a cheap 50-68 pins adapter from ebay but it does not work.
We need those adapters with upper byte termination but i can't find one.

[Dandy]

...
and a 50pin to 68pin adaptor and I can't get the A3000 to see any device I attach to it.



Are you sure that it is 50pin to 68pin adaptor and not 68pin to 50pin adaptor?

I ask, because I had the 68pin to 50pin adaptor in use to connect my SCSI-II CD-ROM and SCSI-II CD-RW to the UW-SCSI connector on the UW-SCSI cable. Worked fine here.

But the other way round? I don't think that could work...

If I got you right, you're trying to go from 50-pin SCSI-II (your host in the A3k) to 68 pins to connect an UW-SCSI to IDE bridge to that?
That won't work, me thinks...

[nicholas]

Hmmmm - why don't you use this AEC-7720U Ultra SCSI-IDE bridge (http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=23&prod_no=AEC-7720U&type1_title=SCSIDE%20Bridge&type1_idno=2)?

AFAIK UW-SCSI has the 68 pin connectors and UW-SCSI specification is different from SCSI-II specification.

So using the one you have might cause incompatibilities.

Get the proper bridge for your SCSI host adaptor and you don't need this passive 50/68 pin converter any more.

You can download the pdf-manual here: http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fc0101.jsp


I ordered a 7720U last weekend, just waiting for it to arrive now. I got the 7722 for cheap on fleabay to run a DVDROM from it.

It works on the PC's Adaptec card but not on the A3000 or the warp engine for some reason.


I don't know about the A3000 SCSI - I have the UW-SCSI on my CSPPC.

For this a basic SCSI chain has to look this way:

active Terminator --- CSPPC UW-SCSI host --- HD1 --- HD2 --- active Terminator.

The internal termination of the drives is switched off with jumper(s), of course.

I need two active terminators as the host on the CSPPC does not provide any termination.

This might be different with the A3000 SCSI - I don''t know.

"Y"-like cables are not allowed for any SCSI.

I think the A3000 onboard SCSI might have onboard termination as the 100MB drive that came with it has just the drive connected to a female 50pin connector on the cable, the second 50pin female connector on the cable connects to the onboard SCSI controller and then a third MALE 50pin connector on the cable just sits there with nothing connected to it but everything seems to work.

When I connected a 50pin SCSI DVDROM with its own onboard terminator to that male 50pin connector, both the hard drive and the DVD both worked perfectly.


I would expect SATA still requiring a lot of CPU power in contrast to any SCSI.

So I would always prefer SCSI for my classic Amiga over any IDE/SATA/PATA or whatever - just because of the better overall system performance.

What a huge difference it was (performance-wise) when I switched from IDE to to the UW-SCSI!

I dunno, but SATA is a darn site easier to use! :)

[nicholas]

I have two of these adapters. The 50 pins version that works like a charm in my A2000 and the 68 pins UW version. I bought a cheap 50-68 pins adapter from ebay but it does not work.
We need those adapters with upper byte termination but i can't find one.

The adapter I have is to connect 68pin devices to 50pin controllers. That is all I know about it. :/

[nicholas]

If I got you right, you're trying to go from 50-pin SCSI-II (your host in the A3k) to 68 pins to connect an UW-SCSI to IDE bridge to that?
That won't work, me thinks...

That's correct.

Hopefully the 7720U will come in the morning and I will be able to test it in the evening and report back.

[Dandy]

That's correct.

Hopefully the 7720U will come in the morning and I will be able to test it in the evening and report back.



Hey Nick - did the 7720U arrive in the meantime and solve your prob?

[nicholas]

Hey Nick - did the 7720U arrive in the meantime and solve your prob?

Hi Dandy,

It arrived last week but we are in the process of moving house at the moment so I haven't had any free time to set it up yet.

I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I get around to it though! :)

[Xanxi]

I have read somewhere else that there should not be any problem with upper byte termination with a disk of less than 4,5 GB.
What disk did you try so far dude?

[Forcie]

SCSI is far too confusing for my little brain. I hope the NatAmi will have SATA! :lol:

Adding SATA to Natami today would require a far too expensive FPGA. The current board uses PATA (3,5 IDE + CF slot). However, you are free to add a SATA controller using a PCI card. Supporting that controller software-wise will be another question, though. There are also SATA-PATA converters, if you absolutely must use SATA devices.