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Calgor wrote:Unless your 68-50 pin adapter has upper byte termination (it is not mentioned in your description), then you have incorrectly terminated your SCSI chain.

As you have an UWSCSI device before the 68-50 adapter, you need to terminate those extra bytes existing in the UWSCSI as opposed to the Narrow SCSI.

Please refer to the Cyberstorm PPC manual as reference; it has very good examples.

If SCSI CD/DVD-ROM has 68 pin connector it is real Ultra Wide SCSI device and does not need upper byte termination, right? I mean if I get optical drive with 68 pin connector, I don't have to bother myself with narrow-wide issues, right?

Yes, you need full(upper and lower byte) powered, "active" termination at both ends of the SCSI chain. I am sorry, but the CSPPC SCSI controller will simply not work or be too unreliable a y other way. SCSI I/II can be very forgiving, but SCSI 3 is not.

danbeaver wrote:Yes, you need full(upper and lower byte) powered, "active" termination at both ends of the SCSI chain. I am sorry, but the CSPPC SCSI controller will simply not work or be too unreliable a y other way. SCSI I/II can be very forgiving, but SCSI 3 is not.

I have now read a lot about SCSI termination and various types of terminators. One thing remains unanswered does the two active terminators have to be same brand and model? I mean is that required or is there some benefit for them to be exact same model?

I have one that is made by FOXCONN in the other end of the cable, so should I try to look for same type?

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "no." The just have to be active (not passive) and wide (16-bits); I like the one with glowing led to remind me that they are powered up.

I have not yet found any internal active terminators with LED. External active terminator with LED are much more common, but I think there is no way of connecting external terminators to CSPPC or atleast I have not a cable to support this or an adapter to gender change external terminator to fit cable made for internal devices and terminators.

Here LED is described to indicate that termpower is on:
http://web.archive.org/web/201106100243 ... orial.html

Here LED is described to indicate that the terminator is connected or the mode it is running at:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/scsi/ ... ion-c.html
"The LED on the external shows that the terminator is connected.
Some multimode LVD/SE terminators have LEDs that light up
one color when the bus is running in LVD mode, and a different
color when it is running in SE mode. This is useful for troubleshooting."

The importance of active termination made me to question if it is bad that I use ID 0 for Adaptec SCSI to SATA adapter and ID 1 for SCSI CDROM, since I think I saw someone writing ID 0 should never be used and other writing saying CDROMs are usually factory set to ID 4 (why?). I just felt using the first two IDs could give result faster boot times, when it could stop scanning the SCSI bus IDs earlier.

Well, that is interesting.

Half my terminators (internal) glow orange -- have an LED, and half don't. Same with my external terminators half do and half don't. I do have one external diagnostic SCSI 2 pass-thru drive with 8 lights, but it does not terminate.

Getting away from LEDs, just make sure both ends of the bus have active, wide termination. Passive termination just uses resisters to level out the signals; active terminators suppress the signal with better signal-to-noise ratios than passive. Also passive tend to be "on board" devices, narrow (8-bits), cheap, and work best on short bus length.

danbeaver wrote:Same with my external terminators half do and half don't. I do have one external diagnostic SCSI 2 pass-thru drive with 8 lights, but it does not terminate.

I have 2 68-pin external male active LED terminators. Is there any way to connect them to CSPPC cable which I use since it only has 68-pin male connectors?

Er, well yes. You CAN connect them using a 68-pin to external connector on both ends of your internal cable, but why not just order two internal active, wide terminators? You should be able to locate them for around $10 USD -- do not pay 60 bucks for one! Google is your friend ( or MetaCrawler, AltaVista, Bing etc.).