ConnectCom Solutions has announced they are shipping a PCI card that allows users to plug legacy SCSI as well as Ultra2 SCSI devices in to their Macs. According to ConnectCom:
ConnectCom Solutions today announces the shipment of its AdvanSys ASB3950U2W "two-in-one" Ultra2 Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) board. It offers "no-compromise" support for both Ultra2 and legacy SCSI devices by combining two generations of AdvanSys SCSI chips on one board, thus giving resellers, system integrators and end users alike significant performance benefits.
The card is compatible with both PC and Macintosh platforms. Drivers are available to support DOS, Windows 9X, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Novell Netware, Solaris X86, SCO Unixware, Linux, and MacOS.
Dubbed the "Two-in-One'' board by ConnectCom salespeople, the card delivers all the high performance features of Ultra2 SCSI. It also fully supports Ultra Wide SCSI with backwards compatibility to previous SCSI generations.
As a result, ConnectCom's AdvanSys ASB3950U2W seamlessly combines the old with the new for best performance. This Ultra2 SCSI board allocates one channel to Ultra2-type SCSI devices using low voltage differential (LVD) I/O interfaces while the other channel is dedicated for legacy interface technologies. The resulting benefit to users is optimum performance for all SCSI devices connected to their computing systems while using only one PCI slot.
The Ultra2 SCSI specification uses the LVD I/O interface to achieve increased cable length and improve overall transmission reliability. With LVD signaling technology, the board can provide increased cable lengths of up to 12 meters on a fully loaded Wide (16-bit) SCSI bus with 15 devices or 25 meters for point-to-point connections, as might be created between a host SCSI card and one device.
Other Ultra2 SCSI features include true multitasking SCSI bus master operation and a chip architecture featuring a 40 MIPS embedded RISC processor. ConnectCom's AdvanSys ASB3950U2W supports combined (burst) SCSI data transfer rates of up to 120 MB/second, and PCI burst transfer rates of up to 132 MB/second, enabling demanding applications such as digital video, real-time simulation, data warehousing and data mining on workstations, servers, RAID and cluster configurations.
