[plug] Card Trek: The Search for SCSI

[Mike]

I have an ISA scsi card - you can have it for $30 - I think its
an adaptec 1542B - I've upgraded the ROMS and the card works fine,
I also have a UMAX scanner too :)

rgds

Mike
PS: I am in Mt Hawthorn, email off list if interested
PPS: Are you an editor/author by trade ;-) ?



At 11:12 PM 24/10/2001 +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
>-- 
>Public key information available at:
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>
>Where there is much light there is also much shadow.
>		-- Goethe
>
>
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