USB to SCSI adapter & Alchemy

[dvdborn]

I know it's a long shot, but here goes:

Has anyone ever tried to use a USB to SCSI adapter with a non SCSI Mac and control their EIII using Alchemy 3?

At the moment I'm using an upgraded PowerPC 7100 with a G3 processor & an Audiomedia II card to run Alchemy 3. I also have the latest PowerBook G3 that came with SCSI that I can use with Alchemy.

Now, I've also got a PowerBook G4 1.67Mhz. But since it doesn't have SCSI the USB to SCSI adapter seems like a good solution. If it actually works...

I came across this adapter http://www.usb-ware.com/usb-scsi-adapter-u2scx.htm but I don't want to pay $115 for it not knowing if it would work.

[wirefall]

Yes, I've just done it. Today! Finally! And guess what, it has been successful!  

I bought an ARISTON SCSI to USB adapter (ebay), this one came with a CD with OS 9 (!) drivers. It is known that this item provides not only connection to only one SCSI device but to a whole bunch of 7 devices on a Mac, like you would expect from a usual SCSI bus.

With this adapter SCSI Probe detects the EIII at once (and the Apple CD-ROM 300 and Iomega Jaz 2GB between the EIII and the Mac), and so do Alchemy!
Works flawlessly so far. The Ariston is attached to a Mac PPC 9600 with 1,5 GB RAM, pimped with a 800 MHz G4 CPU from Sonnet and a USB/Firewire PCI card. Pretty cool to run Alchemy that fast Of course SCSI dumps are as slow as you would expect from the good old trusty EIII. However, I'm really happy with this solution!  

Don't know if other adapters would work (like the one you mentioned). If you could find an ARISTON adapter without the drivers, no prob, as I could send them to you.

If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line.

[dvdborn]

That's actually great news. Thanks for sharing this info.
I see if I can find the Ariston adapter.

[wirefall]

Please note I have that adapter with a DB 25 pin SCSI connector.

There are also more modern adapters from Ariston with HD 50 pin connector, like in an actual auction (ebay 260717687829). Don't know if those work with Alchemy, too, even with the OS 9 driver I've got with my DB 25-pin adapter.

[nignignig]

The Mac PPC 9600 has a scsi port so I don't undarstand the use of a scsi-usb adapter connected to a PCI<> Usb card ?
I think that a usb to scsi adapter is needed to connect the EIII with a Mac without a scsi port. 

Is it possible run Alchemy 3.0 in Os 9?
I try this setup without success :
EIII>Mac G3 266 beige Os 9 Alchemy 3.0

So for my little knowledge I suppose to find a Mac 7100 with Os 7 running Alchemy connected via scsi to the EIII and hope in a success.

 

 

[wirefall]

Sure it has a SCSI port, but I have a lot of SCSI stuff there. And my EIII is used with CD-ROM and iomega Jaz, so there just weren't enough IDs.
From that point I started with adding a SCSI PCI card, but I could not find any which works properly with all the other PCI cards together.
The solution was indeed the mentioned adapter.

Of course you don't need such a, when you are running a 9600 only with few SCSI gear. Otherwise it is good to know, that an adapter would work with an appropriate USB Mac.

And yes: Alchemy runs perfectly with OS 9, even with OS 9.22 which is installed on my PPC 9600 via this here: http://www.os9forever.com/os9helper.html
Also my 9600 is upgraded with a Sonnet G4 CPU (800MHz). Interesting, that it wouldn't run on your old world G3.

Just an idea: I remember I couldn't run Alchemy on such a machine, too, but it worked, when I installed OS 9 again freshly. Maybe some incompatible extension? Try this, if possible: Plug in a second hard drive and make a fresh OS 9 install, then check again if Alchemy is ok with that. If so, your installation is somehow not friendly enough to Alchemy.

[wirefall]

Just have had the opportunity to test another SCSI-USB adapter, the Adaptec USBXchange. Works rock solid with Alchemy and EIII connected.

It's the first version, not the USB2 one!

See here:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/scsi_mac/usbxchange/

Comes with OS 8 and OS 9 extensions, also a control panel to switch between mass storage and other SCSI devices (like the EIII   ).