(sku´zē) Short for
small computer system interface, a
parallel interface standard used by
Apple Macintosh computers,
PCs, and many
UNIX systems for attaching
peripheral devices to
computers. Nearly all Apple Macintosh computers, excluding only the earliest Macs and the recent
iMac, come with a SCSI
port for attaching
devices such as
disk drives and
printers.
SCSI interfaces provide for faster data transmission rates (up to 80 megabytes per second) than standard serial and parallel ports. In addition, you can attach many devices to a single SCSI port, so that SCSI is really an I/O bus rather than simply an interface.
Although SCSI is an ANSI standard, there are many variations of it, so two SCSI interfaces may be incompatible. For example, SCSI supports several types of connectors.
While SCSI has been the standard interface for Macintoshes, the iMac comes with IDE, a less expensive interface, in which the controller is integrated into the disk or CD-ROM drive. Other interfaces supported by PCs include enhanced IDE and ESDI for mass storage devices, and Centronics for printers. You can, however, attach SCSI devices to a PC by inserting a SCSI board in one of the expansion slots. Many high-end new PCs come with SCSI built in. Note, however, that the lack of a single SCSI standard means that some devices may not work with some SCSI boards.
The following varieties of SCSI are currently implemented:
