There's a big difference between just turning a SCSI device on that is
already on the chain, and unplugging and plugging in SCSI devices with
power on. Toggling the power on an already connected SCSI device may or
may not screw things up - I've seen both cases. When it doesn't work it
usually locks up the computer. It also might not be symmetric; turning a
device on may cause no problems, but if you turn it off, it locks up.
Unless you like buying new devices and/or computers, do NOT
connect/disconnect a SCSI device to/from the chain with the computer
powered up! It can fry the SCSI controller on the computer, or the
device itself, so is generally considered a Bad Thing. There are
hot-swappable SCSI controllers for servers and the like, where it is
essential to swap out a hard drive without bringing the system down, but
these are not usually found on normal desktop machines.
That's the nice thing about USB and FireWire, since you can plug and
unplug at will. And really, USB isn't all THAT slow - it is faster than
normal ethernet, and works pretty well on my Minolta Scan Dual II with my
Rev A iMac, running Classic on top of OSX :)
With all that said, I don't really mind SCSI either. I've got a Unix box
with with 6 devices on it, and once you figure out to get things in the
right order, it works very well.
Mark Marr-Lyon
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