SCSI for Dummies
by Steven Salemi

IDG Books Worldwide – an International Data Group Company -- has made a fortune selling a series of popular computer training books, designed from the ground up for "dummies."
 

In case you’ve been hibernating for the last five years, these "dummies" tomes are characterized by excruciatingly-bright yellow covers and – even more unbearably – a kind of "terminally cute" writing style.
 

This style is no accident. Created and refined by a team of internationally-renowned pre-natal and child psychologists, the unique, patented "dummies" style employs sophisticated neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques.
 

The intention is to lull readers into an unwarranted and imaginary sense of security, self-confidence, happiness, and well being with respect to the operation and maintenance of their computer systems.
 

Unfortunately, it has yet to be demonstrated whether regression to an infantile state will assist -- or hinder -- the process of learning how to use a computer.

Hi Folks!

Now that you’ve mastered the fine art of switching on your computer and changing your screen saver settings so your desktop isn’t covered with flying toasters, you’re ready for the next book in our series, "SCSI for Dummies."

Get some milk and cookies, find a nice warm spot on the sofa next to the cat, turn off Ally MacBeal, and get ready for a walloping good time, because SCSI IS COOL.

SCSI is pronounced "scuzzy," and there are so many excellent jokes about this acronym that we won’t repeat them here. Instead, we’ll substitute a not-so-funny – but undeniably cute – joke of our own.

A man walks into a computer shop, holding a dead hard disk. "It’s crashed," he says. "I need another."

"SCSI?" asks the man at the computer shop.

"I said, it’s CRASHED, and I need…"

Get it? No? Well, you see, "SCSI" sounds kind of like "excuse me" -- less so in print, admittedly, but more so when spoken aloud. Try it on a friend, you’ll see. Okay, so maybe you had to be there.

SCSI is cool because it lets you daisy-chain devices. No, that’s not some hippie thing where you tie computer parts around your neck and head for Woodstock.

Daisy-chain means connecting a lot of different devices together on a single chain. Of course, it’s not really a chain, because you can’t use chains to connect devices, unless you want to lock them up somehow to prevent them from being stolen.

By the time you finish this book, I guarantee you will not want to do that.

Contemplating SCSI...

A SCSI "chain" is a bunch of separate SCSI cables connecting a series of devices along a kind of "virtual computer cable." Since you can daisy chain up to 17 devices on a SCSI chain, you’ll need 17 cables to make a really long, really cool SCSI chain.

Ready? Okay, let’s go for it! But you’d better be prepared, financially-speaking. At about $25 per cable, you’ll be spending nearly $400 on SCSI cables alone. That’s probably more than your entire computer system is worth, if you’re reading a book like this.

Hey, aren’t computers cool? You’re ready to plunk down big bucks, and you haven’t the foggiest idea why! Computers do have that effect on people. So relax, you’re only human.

It would be nice if you could go to the corner store and buy all the SCSI cables you need for this job, but no, you have to get them from a computer specialist, somehow, somewhere.

Take heart, there are only a few dozen types of SCSI cables to choose from. That’s a very small number compared to, say, the number of insect species found on earth.

Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it...

There’s regular SCSI, and Wide SCSI, and Fast SCSI, and Fast Wide SCSI, and Wide Fast SCSI. Then there’s Ultra SCSI, Ultra Wide SCSI, Ultra Fast SCSI, Ultra Fast Wide SCSI, and Ultra Wide Fast SCSI. Then there’s SCSI II, and Wide SCSI II, and Fast SCSI II, and Fast Wide SCSI II, and Wide Fast SCSI II -- and Ultra SCSI II, Ultra Wide SCSI II, Ultra Fast SCSI II, Ultra Fast Wide SCSI II, and Ultra Wide Fast SCSI II. And don't forget the new Ultra2 (LVD) SCSI...

Pick your favorite SCSI protocol from the list above, and let’s begin. There are important differences, but it would take you several lifetimes to learn them. If you’re not sure which one’s best, go down to the local computer shop, ask the nice man there exactly what you need, and order one cheap out of some mail order catalog.

Hopefully, the mail order place will send you the right one, and the thing will work, but chances are it won’t. There’s nothing wrong with the cable, of course – it’s fine – it’s just that you’ve screwed up something, somewhere along the line. God knows, you’ll have plenty of opportunities.

No really, SCSI is easy and painless...just try it!

If you’re not in a hurry, you can waste lots of time -- and make yourself feel better for a little while, anyhow -- by calling the mail order place back and yelling at them and asking them to send you another cable.

The replacement cable won’t work either, for the simple reason that it is exactly like the first one. But don’t worry! Just call the nice man at the computer shop any time, day or night, and ask him what to do. He’ll be happy to help. Some people just live for others!

Now that you’ve got the right SCSI cable, you can pick a matching SCSI card, any SCSI card. SCSI cards are available in a bewildering variety of models, analogous to the SCSI cables I mentioned earlier.

The only difference is, they’re more expensive than cables.

The nice thing about SCSI is that it's so easy...!

If you bought a SCSI hard disk, you’ll definitely need a SCSI card, unless your computer has SCSI built-in, or "onboard SCSI." There’s a joke about "onboard SCSI" involving sailors and certain rare, difficult-to-cure tropical diseases, but we can’t print it in a family book like this.

If you bought a new SCSI scanner, there was probably a SCSI card included with it. This card is guaranteed to work with your scanner, and guaranteed not to work with any other SCSI device on the planet.

So now it’s time to throw out the perfectly good SCSI card that came with your scanner, and purchase a separate, super-expensive Adapclaptrap-brand SCSI card instead.

The Adapclaptrap card may cost you more than the scanner itself, but it’s worth it. The new Adapclaptrap 29040-1040A card can piggy-back onto a second Adapclaptrap 29040-1041B card, to support up to 34 SCSI devices on a single daisy-chain.

Way cool!

Are you ready for SCSI?
Do you have what it takes?

You’ll get all the help you could possibly need from "More SCSI for Dummies," available soon at huge mega-bookstores near you. It may also be available at smaller, locally-owned booksellers, providing they haven’t been driven out of business by the huge mega-bookstores.

By the time you get all this hooked up and working, you’ll have the equivalent of an advanced degree in SCSI. It’s something you can put on your resume, and when you decide to bag computers entirely, it may help you get into aviation maintenance school or some post-graduate comparative literature program at the community college.

When you’re ready, take the expensive new SCSI card in your hand – you own it! -- and determine by close examination whether it is a "jumpered" or "jumperless" SCSI card. The difference? Jumpered cards have jumpers; jumperless cards have no jumpers.

Aren’t you glad you bought this book?

It's a SCSI hard drive, and yes, ***I***
figured out how to make it work!!!

Jumpers are tiny little pieces of metal surrounded by plastic. They look like no other objects on earth. Their precise function has been discussed widely in technical circles, and is still the object of much debate, but has never been proven.

Jumpers are difficult to grasp with your fingers, and if you try to use a needle-nose pliers, you’ll crush them and render them useless.

Be careful! Jumpers are an endangered species, and there is absolutely no way to obtain replacements. The supply of jumpers on earth is large, but finite.

If you have children, you might employ their nimble little fingers to help you with the SCSI card setup. Then again, you don’t really want your children to hate you intensely when they get older, so maybe you’d better just stumble through this job yourself. Don’t be a Scrooge; let your kids enjoy what’s left of their childhood.

If your card is jumperless, you’re in for trouble – admittedly, a different kind of trouble.

Don't worry!  SCSI is very, very friendly...

Jumperless cards rely on the magic of "Plug and Pray" technology, which actually works some of the time, for the same reason that prayers work SOME of the time.

In an ideal "Plug and Pray" scenario, you install the SCSI card in the computer, switch it on, and the operating system detects the card, loads the necessary drivers, and reconfigures resource settings to make the card work.

Ideal ""Plug and Pray" scenarios are like seeing the Northern Lights – a very rare, and very beautiful experience, for sure, but nothing you can count on.

More often, "Plug and Pray" tries its best, but you end up with a non-working card anyway. It’s not the fault of Microsoft – those guys work pretty hard, and unlike our readers, they are no dummies.

Fall under this woman's spell, and you might even be persuaded
to buy a Packard-Bell Computer...with a 5 1/2-Inch Floppy Drive!!!

The real problem is that the computer you purchased at Office Despot BEFORE you bought this book doesn’t have enough free resources to accommodate the SCSI card.

You see, computers intended for consumer purchase come stuffed to the gills with all kinds of useless multimedia junk, like voice mail systems and video phones and animated greeting cards with beanie baby characters.

All this ridiculous stuff hogs up system resources, leaving nothing for expansion into serious areas of computing, like image scanning or audio editing or computer-to-computer communications…

…or even a second printer port!

All it takes to master SCSI is preparation...

So now you have to enter what we call a deep mourning or grieving period (see the work of Elizabeth Kubler Ross for more information). Some call it "The Dark Night of The Soul." Because now you realize, for the very first time, that the $2,500 VERY hard-earned dollars you dropped at the office store was, more or less, completely wasted.

To speak frankly, you failed at the task of buying an excellent computer, just like the guy at the office store who sold it to you failed at the task of completing his high school academic program.

Why did you listen to this individual, whom you would not have otherwise trusted to fold a newspaper? Well, the reasons are pretty complex, involving areas as diverse as psychology, economics, and voodoo.

Copy paper...fine. Paper clips, Scotch Tape, O.K...
A COMPUTER SYSTEM??? No Way!

But, simply put, a place that’s ideal for buying a two-dollar box of paper clips is not necessarily an ideal place for purchasing an expensive, complex computer system.

The truth is, you’ll have to purchase a REAL computer before you can proceed to build that wonderful, fabulous 17-device daisy-chain. So let’s break off the chapter here, and pick up again when you’ve got a real computer -- not an expensive, stylized consumer-appliance-toy – on your desktop.

We at IDG know (better than we know anything else) that there’s money to be made in virtually every area of computing. We don’t get into nasty ethical questions about what people should and shouldn’t be spending their money on.

We don’t make the waves, man, we just surf them.

So stay-tuned for the next exciting installment in the wildly-successful "dummies" series, "Nintendo for Adults for Dummies."