When I've read about using SCSI in the past, several things I've noted are
that it's finicky, it cannot live update, and connecting devices with the
machine running stands a good chance of you destroying your motherboard but
nothing else.

Now, I have a SCSI chain on my StarMax 4000/200 (MESH SCSI host) consisting
of a Microtek ScanMaker E6 connected to an internally terminated Zip 100
drive. The Zip drive is always on when the Mac is, but the scanner is left
off.

I know that I had some bother with the Zip drive power connection or
something a while back and the drive came on and the disc mounted after the
OS had started, but things got better as of the other day. I'd had the
scanner on each time I booted the Mac, and I also decided to keep the Mac up
for some time. Being unhappy about the scanner being on 24/7 (the lamp does
not go out) and wasting power, I eventually turned it off.

The OS did not freeze. The motherboard did not become toast. And the Zip
drive was still working. The SCSI bus sorted itself out.

Then, today, I'd not long turned the Mac on, and decided that I wanted to
scan something. Normally, I reboot to do that, but this time, I decided
instead to just turn it on, load Photoshop and run ScanWizard. It worked
perfectly - ScanWizard correctly located the scanner on the bus and all was
well.

I do wonder if only [I]connecting[/I] (but not merely powering up) a device
fries the machine, but either way, my Mac seems to be going above and beyond
the call of duty as far as SCSI is concerned, as I'm sure it's not meant to
be able to do this!

Weird... I've cursed SCSI for "requiring" a reboot for ages, and maybe it
was all unnecessary. Either that, or next time I'll push my luck and there
will be a zap and no machine... :)

- uilleann

PS I managed 99 hours 45 minutes 37 seconds uptime according to version 1 of
my Uptime app (with added LCD display readout). I was really looking
forwards to seeing it crash at 100 hours (it can't handle more than two hour
digits), but REALbasic destroyed the Finder and the OS when I was working on
a replacement Uptime app (I was just typing in it at the time, I think -
there are more bugs in REALbasic than in what I was making!) and ruined my
changes.

*sigh* Surely it's possible to get more hours out of Mac OS 9.1 - it was
doing really well, too (and I had stacks of apps open, dnetc crunching data,
etc). Guess it was my fault for not periodically reloading REALbasic to that
it can't stab itself full of enough holes to sink itself.


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