Denton Taylor wrote:
> That's not true. Mine is working happily with another brand of card.
and Jay Maynard responded:
Consider yourself fortunate. My father had to go buy an Adaptec when the
Minolta refused to work with his NCR/Symbios Logic-based card, and
Minolta
refused to do anything but tell him to go buy an Adaptec. This is also
the
experience of more than a few folks on Usenet. One person even reported
that
he couldn't get his to work with an Adaptec PCMCIA SCSI card. Minolta
explicitly states in all of their documentation that they only support
Adaptec cards. Minolta explains this by saying that they consider
Adaptec
the standard of the industry. While this may be true, the idea of SCSI
is
interoperability, and Minolta's attitude is just plain wrong.
I'm happy it works for you, but that doesn't change my recomendation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't quarrel with your recommendation Jay. However, I wouldn't go so
far as to say that Minolta's attitude is just plain wrong. I'm sure
it's an economic decision and, as long as they're up front about it with
the customers ("Minolta explicitly states in all of their
documentation...") we should accept it for what it is.
While the idea of SCSI may be interoperability, the implementation (like
so many other computer industry "standards") is all too often
otherwise. Early SCSI cards, in particular, were frequently proprietary
devices with a SCSI label. As a software producer I can't guarantee that
my software works with everybody's brand of hardware and/or driver
without comprehensive testing. But testing is extremely expensive and
time consuming and often requires adding special code to support the
guys who don't conform.
With my own company's product I limit compatibility testing to a handful
of the top hardware/software products. Some potential customers are
extremely unhappy and can't understand why I don't support their
favorite device. The answer is simple. It would cost me more money to
try and support their favorite device than I can make on the sale.
Although all of the products claim to support the same software API
there are no two of them that _actually_ work alike. Even those I do
support contain numerous bug fixes and version dependencies that seem to
mock the "standard".
So, if Minolta is trying to compete vigorously in a low cost market I
can understand their decision very well. I might not be happy with it
if I really like the Minolta and have got someone else's SCSI card...
but I do understand and accept the rationale.
Probably everybody on the list (including me) wishes that Oly would
suddenly start producing new and wonderful OM stuff. But I don't think
it's going to happen... and I think the reason is simple. They don't
think they can make any money at it.
Now, who can tell me about the new HP S20 scanner? It uses USB instead
of SCSI. Actually, that's probably even more dangerous. My motherboard
is one of the first to have USB and it has never been checked out. I'll
give it a 50/50 chance of working even if HP has got the USB standard
100% right. It's pretty sad but, unfortunately, that's the state of PC
hardware and software.
Chuck Norcutt
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