[plug] Card Trek: The Search for SCSI

[Trent Lloyd]

damn :/

At 11:12 PM 24/10/01 +0800, you wrote:
>Today was my day off so I went hunting for a SCSI card.  I needed something
>that could be plugged into my wife's computer so she could use the old UMAX
>scanner we bought several years ago.  She's been begging me for months to
>hook up the scanner. I had stolen the original SCSI 2 card to use with the
>server to do backups.
>
>I don't really know much about SCSI cards.  All I really knew was that I
>didn't want anything too expensive.  I was hoping to get away with spending
>around $50.
>
>So my wife and I started shopping around in the city.  It's
>reasonably close to home and it meant we could do some other stuff we needed
>to do there as well.  Two birds, one stone sorta thing.  Or that was the plan.
>
>The first place we went to was along the way on the fringes of the city.  It
>had a guy in his forties or fifties sitting behind a long counter like you
>expect to see at a hotel check-in.  He was working on his computer and I
>thought he was the secretary.  It turns out he was the sole sales assistant.
>He was dressed in a suit and I sensed that he expected his customers to be
>likewise attired.  I was in jeans and a t-shirt.  I asked him if he had any
>cheap SCSI cards that were compatible with linux.  He looked at me for a
>moment as though I had just uttered a blasphemy (there were Windows ME
>posters everywhere), then tapped a few keys on his computer.  He then asked,
>"what card was I after?" Great, I thought.  A choice.  I told him that I
>wasn't after any particular card.  I just needed something that was
>compatible with SCSI 2 and that had linux drivers available.  He nodded,
>punched a few keys on his computer again, and then told me that they had no
>SCSI cards whatsoever.  That there had been a shortage due to the events of
>September 11th.  He even speculated that the shortage was because the
>military had snatched them all up.  I smiled, nodded and left.
>
>The next place we visited was a few blocks further down the road.  By local
>standards this place it was huge.  It had two exits.  You enter by one,
>through a turnstile, and exit through the other. The place was pretty full.
>The phone was ringing all the time and sales assistants were rushing around
>frantically. I thought that we would surely find a card to suit our purposes
>here.  So we browsed.  We found lots of graphics cards, networking cards, tv
>turner cards, a bunch of hard drives safely locked in a glass cabinet, but no
>SCSI cards.  They must keep them in the back, I thought.  So I managed to
>attract the attention of one of the sales assistants, a petite chinese girl.
>And I asked her if they had any SCSI cards.  She told me that they didn't
>stock any SCSI cards.  That there wasn't a demand for them.  So we thanked
>her and made our goodbyes.  I failed to mention that she had a stack of SCSI
>hard drives in the glass cabinet.
>
>We had lunch and did some errands before moving onto the next place.  A
>national franchise store.  They too had lots of glass cabinets filled with
>nifty toys. Unfortunately none of the cabinets held SCSI cards.  So my wife
>asked the sales assistant if they had any.  The sales assistant checked her
>computer and then reported that they didn't stock SCSI cards in this state,
>that they were only available over east.  Something to remember when over
>east: buy lots of SCSI cards and sell them at home.  I'd make a killing.
>
>The next place we visited held some personal history.  I had once tried to
>buy a mobile phone there.  I had asked to examine one of the phones so I
>could feel how heavy it was only to be told by the elderly sales assistant
>that that was against store policy.  I told him what he could do with his
>policy and promptly left.  As a result I wasn't too hopeful, but we were
>running short of options and it was in the area.  So we entered the store and
>I saw that everything had changed.  There wasn't an elderly sales assistant
>in sight.  It was all sleek and professional boys.  We had a quick look
>around but couldn't seen any SCSI cards.  One of the boys noticed our worried
>looks and asked us if we needed any assistance.  So I asked him if they had
>any SCSI cards.  He asked me how to spell SCSI.  Twice.  We left.
>
>By this tme I was getting really frustrated.  My wife was getting sore feet.
>We had walked all over the city and had yet to find any SCSI cards let alone a
>cheap one that worked with linux.  But fortune favours the brave, or so they
>say, and the next place we visited actually had a solitary SCSI card for sale.
>Unfortunately, it was $165.  I could have bought a brand new USB scanner for
>only a little more.
>
>My wife had had enough but I had one more ace up my sleeve.  I knew of a
>second-hand store that just might have something for us.  I would have gone
>there first but the other stores were closer to our errands.  So we headed
>over there.  It was a good 2-3 km walk.  We do a lot of walking so it
>wouldn't have been a bother except my wife had worn her CFM boots and they
>were starting to hurt. So, to put it mildly, we were less than pleased when
>we discovered that the store was closed.
>
>We'd both had enough by then and so we headed home.  I don't think my wife
>will be bugging me about the scanner any time soon.  A-ha!  My ploy worked.
>Perhaps I'll surprise her and buy a card online and have it delivered.
>
>skribe
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>Where there is much light there is also much shadow.
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