Descriptions and explanations
of the primary cables used in SCSI buses.
There are three primary cable types used in SCSI systems.
They are all generally compatible and differ in performance,
reliability, ease of use, and total reliable length of bus.
The Gender of a cable should always be considered, but generally
speaking, SCSI devices have female ports and SCSI cables are male.
RS-232, also called DB25.
One of the first popular cable types since
it existed before SCSI was developed. It contains 25 wires,
one of which is grounded.
Common SCSI devices that use DB25 cabling
- Iomega external SCSI Zip Drive
- Zip Zoom scsi adapter
- Most Apple Macintosh Computers
- Hewlett Packard Scanners and other scanners.
Other devices using DB25 cabling
- Iomega Ditto tape drives.
- Iomege external Parallel Zip Drive
- LPT port of IBM compatible computers (for printers)
- Serial ports of IBM compatible computers,(COM1 is often DB9, but still
is considered RS-232
- external modems
- serial printers
Centronics
One of the first cables to consider the details
and problems of SCSI buses. It is named after
the first company to produce the cable. It contains
50 wires, 25 of which are grounded.
Common SCSI devices which use Centronics cabling.
- external hard disk drives
- external CDROM drives
- Adaptec 1540/1542 scsi adapters
- Hewlett Packard and other scanners.
- Adaptec 1460 PCMCIA/SCSI adapter
Mini DB50, HD50, and High Density 50pin, all mean the same thing.
Small, easy to use, and the most reliable,
contains 50 wires of which 25 are grounded.
Common SCSI devices which use SCSI2-MiniDB50 cabling.
- Iomega Jaz Drive
- most PCI and VESA SCSI adapters
- Adaptec 2940 scsi adapters
- Jaz Jet SCSI adapter
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