For those of you who have been considering converting an IDE drive to SCSI please read this email I sent this morning to Addonics. Addonics is one of the major vendors for the ACARD OEM IDE-to-SCSI and ATAPI-to-SCSI converter products. I have been having trouble getting one of these configurations working for over a week now and I could only find one reference on Google to anything related to this topic so I am posting my findings here in an effort for someone else to be able to find this information easily instead of going through all the troubleshooting I had to. The email below is regarding Addonics/Acard's ATAPI-to-SCSI converter card for use with DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW drives.
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_c ... i_scsi.asp
http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/aec-7722.html
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Hello,
I wanted to give you an update on the problem I had with the SCSI bus resetting when trying to write with to DVDR drives. I did not have success with the Sony DRU-500A or Plextor PX-504A with any program except for ACARD's HA! burning software. Since you guys just OEM their cards I contacted their technical support directly regarding the problem and they told me the following.
You cannot burn DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW unless you:
(1) Use HA! or CloneCD Burning Software
(2) Buy an ACARD Ultra160 SCSI controller
The reason for this is because the writing software is expecting to see an ATAPI device. So when it sends information to that device it is actually connected to the SCSI bus instead and the SCSI controller does not now how to handle the ATAPI command. Since ACARD is aware of this problem they discovered in the process of developing their ATAPI-to-SCSI converter, they have incorporated a fix into their SCSI Controller firmware and into their CD/DVD burning software.
I would appreciate it if you would update your web page to reflect that the your Addonics (OEM ACARD) ATAPI-to-SCSI converters only work with DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW drives if you use ACARD's SCSI controller or software. Right now your web page states that it will work with "any SCSI adapter".... which is simply not true. If I had known of this information beforehand I might have considered other options before investing a lot of money into this type of conversion which is why I think it is crucial for you to update your tech support and marketing documentation.
Luckily I talked with someone who experienced the same problems I did and actually got the same answers from the ACARD tech support. He has a spare ACARD SCSI controller and is going to sell it to me so I can get all this stuff finally working properly.
Regards,
....
