What sort of cable goes here?

Vulpine

So, I've finally decided to join The Future and buy myself a DVD burner, and since I've a few computers I'd like to use one with, external seemed to be the way to go. Since I'm also a bit of a SCSI fan, I began searching for one to match. (This would probably turn out to be a mistake.) This was no easy process. Eventually, however, eBay brought me what the seller purported to be a SCSI DVD-RW drive. All sounded good and nice.

The drive's arrived, however, and it's left my really very confused. It's your typical ATAPI DVD burner within an external enclosure, but it doesn't look SCSI at all. There's no termination options, nowhere to set the ID, nothing, except a power connector and this mystery port. It looks to have 36 pins, but other than that, no idea.

I could always remove the burner from the enclosure and pop it in my primary machine, but if possible I'd like to use the drive externally. So if anybody could put a name to this port, I'd be extremely grateful. Very sorry about the low quality camera 'phone shot, I can try and take a better one. 'Til then:

ecco the dolphin

Can't tell the fine detail from your picture I'm afraid, but does it look like any of the connectors here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_connector

EggyToast

How does getting a SCSI external drive qualify for "joining the future?"

I ran into a few of these -- they had termination built in and usually self-selected an ID or had a default, meaning you had to play number tag with other drives if things didn't show up. Of course, I ran into them back in the 90s when I thought SCSI was cool, but that's almost over 8 years ago. I ditched all my SCSI stuff in early '03 to some audio nerds on eBay, so I can't help beyond that.

vonPoonBurGer

Vulpine wrote:

it doesn't look SCSI at all

There are six different kinds of common SCSI ports. If you start counting the uncommon ones, it's more like a dozen. So it could very well be SCSI. From the photo, it looks to me like it could be an HD-50 port. The little hooks on the sides look like the bit that an HD-50 cable end locks onto, anyway. But I don't think it has enough pins to be HD-50. I count 36 shiny copper-colored blobs that I can only assume are pins, which is about 14 less than an HD-50 port should have.

Vulpine

Thanks for the replies, I'll try and snap a better picture of it in the morning.

EggyToast wrote: »

How does getting a SCSI external drive qualify for "joining the future?"

That was more in reference to me, at long last, getting a DVD writer of some sort. I'm usually behind the times on these things, as now.

I ran into a few of these -- they had termination built in and usually self-selected an ID or had a default, meaning you had to play number tag with other drives if things didn't show up. Of course, I ran into them back in the 90s when I thought SCSI was cool, but that's almost over 8 years ago. I ditched all my SCSI stuff in early '03 to some audio nerds on eBay, so I can't help beyond that.

Interesting. All the devices I've seen before had at least an option for termination (or required adding a terminator specifically) so that threw me somewhat.

AtomBomb

Are you sure it's SCSI? It looks just like this ieee 1294 parallel cable:



I've seen external burners that use this type of cable, but I think they maxed out at 4x4x6, and that was for CD's.....