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Technology Stocks : Adaptec (ADPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (4144)	12/11/1998 9:44:00 PM
From: Jim Switz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5944

Charles, I agree with you completely about the single-drive workstation not really needing SCSI anymore (except, of course, for those special cases that need the fastest possible I/O, like CAD systems for example). Everything that used to "require" SCSI (big hard drives, CD-ROMs, scanners) is now available for EIDE and performs reasonably well. However, for those systems that need a number of devices connected all at once (like mine, for instance) SCSI is still the way to go. I have 11 CD-ROM drive letters (7 of them on a SCSI CD changer), SCSI Zip, SCSI Jaz, SCSI DAT tape, plus two IDE hard drives and a parallel-port scanner. Not likely I could make all that junk hum without SCSI. As for servers, I disagree that Fibre Channel will make an impact inside the box near-term, so I'm agreeing with ADPT's propaganda on that. SCSI will still own the inside of the box, plus a large proportion of external box-to-box connections. It looks pretty obvious that Fibre Channel is coming into its own (slowly) as a long-distance and eventually box-to-box connection. Gigabit Ethernet seems to be catching on as well, and ADPT is a player there as well. Adaptec makes all the right noises about being a Bandwidth Company, not just a SCSI company, so unless management gets brain bubbles again I think we can expect the company to move to where the money is. Now, it's high-end SCSI, later on maybe FC and Gigabit Ethernet.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (4144)	12/11/1998 10:09:00 PM
From: Starowl	Respond to of 5944

There are a lot of you out there on that limb, which has taken a very graceful curve to it I might add. The SCSI-is-dead arguments have subsided somewhat over the past 6 months. I'm neither for nor against SCSI, except as it helps Adaptec make money and the stock price rise. And I have been convinced that SCSI still has a few years left, especially with faster ones coming along, fully backward compatible, allowing systems already using it to upgrade with the newer, faster models. SCSI hard drives, faster and larger, are in production and development. And SCSI was never meant for the average user, who can do fine with a single IDE drive. Larger, faster, cheaper IDE drives have helped bring down the price of computers so more people and businesses can afford them. It will be interesting to watch the competition between FC and SCSI and faster ethernet over the next few years. I'm with you on the difficulty of predicting technology and stock market trends. It it were easy, it wouldn't be so interesting. Starowl