SCSI Connection?

I have an old film scanner, with which I have yet to complete scanning
my family negative & slide archive. Unfortunately there are not many
film scanners left available on the market at a reasonable price, so I
don't want to have to get shut of it just yet.

The problem is that I have my eyes on getting a new iMac, and I'm not
sure if my scanner will work on one of those. It came with installation
instructions for Mac, (OS version not known but it is an ages old
scanner...), but I should think that it will work okay under
WinXP/Parallels anyway.

The problem is that the scanner needs a SCSI connector, and it was a
helluva job getting a PCI card with one of those on for my PC recently.

Martin Sammtleben...

What make is your scanner?

I have a nikon CoolScan LS 2000 that runs fine off a *native* SCSI
connection. FireWire to SCSI adapters are not supported under OSX by
most scanning software as far as I can tell, so you might be out of luck.

Do iMacs have SCSI connectors? Or, if not, is it possible to rig some
sort of SCSI-to- iMac conversion lead?

Brian Hughes...

If you get an iMac, I'd recommend the Ratoc FireWire to SCSI converter:

At MacGurus, although you could get it elsewhere.

I'd also recommend VueScan, assuming your model is supported:

The author, Ed Hamrick, supports a lot of film and flatbed scanners and
it's available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

I'd actually recommend checking on VueScan first, to see if it is
supported, prior to getting the FW to SCSI adapter. There's no guarantee
that the adapter will work under Parallels or WinXP, that's why I'd go
the Mac OS X route.

Anyone have any idea please?

Dave Balderstone...

I'd recommend buying a used older Mac with built-in SCSI. That would be
a beige G3 or older, or possibly a blue & white with a card. It should
only cost you a few pounds, probably the same or less than any kind of
adapter.

gartmann...

The iMac has no possibility to install a SCSI card. SCSI cards are available
from ATTO and Acard. The ones from Adaptec, though no longer officially
supported, still work under Tiger, provided you installed Adaptec's beta
drivers for OS-X. But this is no help for you. There are firewire to SCSI
converters, the problem is whether the scanner software will recognize these.
A good software is Silverfast, but it is not free. Our experience with these
converters are somewhat "mixed". Try to test these things before you buy or
look for an option to return them in case they don't work as expected.

That said, depending on the type of your scanner it might be cheaper to buy a
new scanner.

Christoph Gartmann

Robin McInnes

Cheshire, UK

-Si non confectus, non reficiat-

Michael Vilain...

The only SCSI adapters I've seen for tower Macs are the Adaptecs, which
they no longer make and support. I bought an Adaptec 2930 on eBay, but
found my DAT drive caused Retrospect to crash MacOS X 10.4. I bought a
high capacity Firewire tape drive to replace it and it's _much_ faster.
I think there's less and less support for SCSI devices as MacOS X is
upgraded. You won't find anything that would fit into an iMac, AFAIK.

You might try looking into FIREWIRE TO SCSI adapters on web-search. I found
a number of sites that had info on them. I didn't get one because they
don't do chains of devices and I had 3 peripherals. You might get your
scanner to work with an iMac and this adapter:

It might be just what you need.

isw...

Depends on how old that scanner is. I have an old Microtek, and the
"latest" OS their driver will work on is 7.5.3. Lots of newer Macs can't
use an OS that old.