SCSI connector
Encyclopedia
A SCSI connector is used to connect together computer parts that use a system called SCSI
to communicate with each other. Generally, two connectors, designated male and female, plug together to form a connection which allows two components, such as a computer and a disk drive, to communicate with each other. SCSI connectors can be electrical connector
s or optical connector
s.
There have been a large variety of SCSI connectors in use at one time or another in the computer industry. Probably no computer interconnect (with the possible exception of RS-232
serial) has caused as much confusion. Twenty-five years of evolution and three major revisions of the standards resulted in requirements for Parallel SCSI
connectors that could handle an 8, 16 or 32 bit wide bus running at 5, 10 or 20 Mbit/s, with conventional or differential signaling
. Serial SCSI added another three transport types, each with one or more connector types. Manufacturers have frequently chosen connectors based on factors of size, cost, or convenience at the expense of compatibility.
SCSI often makes use of cable
s to connect devices together; in a typical example, a socket on a computer motherboard
would have one end of a cable plugged into it, while the other end of the cable plugged into a disk drive or other device. This would mean that four connectors were involved in wiring the disk drive and computer together: the connector on the motherboard, the connectors at each end of the cable, and the connector on the disk drive. It is sometimes possible to have cables which have different types of connectors on them, and some cables can have as many as 16 connectors (allowing 16 devices to be wired together). Some types of connectors are typically used inside a computer or disk drive case, while others are used to connect a computer to a separate device such as a scanner or external disk drive.
-style connector. For some connectors (such as the D-subminiature
family) use of the hyphen or space is more common, for others (like the "HD50") less so.
generally had two connectors (power and communication) for 8-bit units, and either two or three connectors for 16-bit units. The power connector was typically the same 4-pin female Molex
connector used in many other internal computer devices. The communication connectors on the drives were usually a 50 (for 8-bit SCSI) or 68 pin male (for 16-bit SCSI) "IDC
header" which has two rows of pins, 0.1 inches apart. This connector has no retaining screws to secure the connectors together, and ribbon cable
s are both inconveniently wide and somewhat delicate, so this connector style was primarily used for connections inside of a computer or peripheral enclosure (as opposed to connecting two enclosures to each other). Thus it is often called an "internal SCSI connector." It is worth noting that this type of header was used for most internal connections in a typical desktop PC until recent times, including the 40-pin (two rows of 20) version used for ATA
disk drives.
While the female connector is slotted such that a cable with a matching keyed male connector can not be inserted upside-down, some manufacturers (including Sun Microsystems
) supplied internal cables with male connectors that did not have the key, allowing for incorrect (and possibly damaging) connections.
In most cases, the host adapter
would have a similar header-style connection. In some cases, though, the host adapter end of the cable would use a different connector. For example, in the Sun 260 series chassis (used for the Sun 3/260 and Sun 4/260 computers), the connector was the same 3-row 96-pin connector used to attach peripheral cards to the VMEbus
backplane
.
Most parallel SCSI disk-drives now utilize an 80-pin SCA
(Single Connector Attachment) connector. This connector includes a power connection and also has long and short pins which enable hot swapping
. Note that this connector is primarily found on disk drive HDA's
(and of course the mating enclosure backplane connector).
Most typically, external drive enclosures will have female connectors, while cables will have two male connectors. As with everything SCSI, there are exceptions.
Early SCSI interfaces commonly used a 50-pin micro ribbon
connector. This connector is similar to the 36-pin connector used by Centronics
for the parallel interface on their printers, thus the connector became popularly known as "Centronics SCSI" or "CN-50". It is also referred to as a "SCSI-1 connector"; since many connectors have been used for SCSI-1, this can be confusing.
Apple used DB-25 connectors, which, having only 25 pins rather than 50,
were less expensive to make, but compromised functionality. Further, DB-25s were commonly used for RS-232 serial cables and also to connect parallel printers, meaning that users might accidentally try to use completely inappropriate cables, since the printer and serial cables would fit the connector properly and be hard to visually distinguish. The DB-25's only advantage was that it was smaller than a CN50.
Sun Microsystems and Data General
used a 50-pin 3-row DD-50
connector, which was sometimes incorrectly called a "DB-50" or "HDB-50". Sun also used DB-25s on a few products.
Digital Equipment Corporation
mostly used the CN-50, but the VAXstation 3100 and DECstation 3100/2100 made use of a MALE 68-pin connector on the rear of the workstation. This connector looks like it would be a high density Wide SCSI-2 connector, but is actually 8-bit SCSI-1.
Apple Macintosh laptops used a squarish external SCSI connector called an HDI-30 (High Density Interconnect) on the laptop itself (not on the peripheral end of the cable, unless two laptops were being connected together). These machines also had the interesting ability to become "SCSI slaves" (officially known as "SCSI Disk Mode
" in Apple documentation), meaning that they could appear to be disk drives when attached to another computer's SCSI controller (a feature later reimplemented over FireWire for later, non-SCSI Mac hardware).
IBM
's early RS6000 workstations sometimes used a "High Density Centronics" connector, which was a Centronics-style connector with smaller pins and shell. For some reason it had 60 pins, and is thus known as the "HDCN60"
Certain Japanese digital camera manufacturers wanted to put SCSI into their equipment, but conventional connectors would have been too large. Like IBM, they used a miniaturized Centronics connector, but this one had 50 pins, and was called the "HPCN50".
Some manufacturers used a DC-37
connector, often incorrectly referred to as a DB-37. These will most commonly be seen on three-cable systems, which are typically 16-bit or 32-bit "Wide SCSI" systems. Extra confusion is generated here since this connector was also frequently used with SMD disk drives, which are completely incompatible with SCSI drives.
(Very High Density Cable Interconnect) connector, also known as an "AMP HPCN68M" (a manufacturer part number), and sometimes as "SCSI-5". There are 68 pins on the connector in two rows; the pins are 0.8 mm apart. This connector is reputed to suffer fewer bent pins than the 68-pin SCSI-2 connector despite its minuscule pins.
Different SCSI standards use the same SCSI connectors as in HVD and LVD SCSI (High Voltage Differential and Low Voltage Differential) . HVD uses 15V while LVD uses 3.3V , so connecting an HVD device to an LVD host bus adaptor can blow the line drivers on the HBA , likewise an HVD HBA connected to an LVD device.
Similarly , connecting a (slow) SE single-ended device onto a (fast) LVD SCSI chain will cause the HBA to sync down to the lowest speed.
While interconnectivity of a number of devices may look straightforward, there are many pitfalls, and with older SE devices the cabling length becomes an issue as signal degrades.
Digital Equipment Corporation's StorageWorks products were one system of this type. DEC briefly allowed third parties to license this system, but reversed the decision after less than a year; as a result, third-party StorageWorks products are quite rare. Compaq
also made a drive caddy system for the Proliant line of servers. Compaq purchased DEC, and Hewlett-Packard
later purchased Compaq, and the Proliant and StorageWorks names were reused on other storage products, including later hot-swap systems.
Some of these caddy systems were OEM
manufactured, which means that the same product could appear with numerous brand names and model identifications.
These Hot-Plug drives in caddies generally use 80 pin SCA
connectors (HP,Compaq, DELL from SCSI-3 to Ultra-320)
Additionally, there is the iSCSI
transport, which is not present on the drives themselves, but is used to connect devices using TCP/IP networks. The drives themselves would use one of the other three connector types.
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
to communicate with each other. Generally, two connectors, designated male and female, plug together to form a connection which allows two components, such as a computer and a disk drive, to communicate with each other. SCSI connectors can be electrical connector
Electrical connector
An electrical connector is an electro-mechanical device for joining electrical circuits as an interface using a mechanical assembly. The connection may be temporary, as for portable equipment, require a tool for assembly and removal, or serve as a permanent electrical joint between two wires or...
s or optical connector
Optical fiber connector
An optical fiber connector terminates the end of an optical fiber, and enables quicker connection and disconnection than splicing. The connectors mechanically couple and align the cores of fibers so that light can pass...
s.
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 is the traditional name for a series of standards for serial binary single-ended data and control signals connecting between a DTE and a DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
serial) has caused as much confusion. Twenty-five years of evolution and three major revisions of the standards resulted in requirements for Parallel SCSI
Parallel SCSI
Parallel SCSI is one of the interface implementations in the SCSI family. In addition to being a data bus, SPI is a parallel electrical bus: There is one set of electrical connections stretching from one end of the SCSI bus to the other. A SCSI device attaches to the bus but does not interrupt it...
connectors that could handle an 8, 16 or 32 bit wide bus running at 5, 10 or 20 Mbit/s, with conventional or differential signaling
Differential signaling
Differential signaling is a method of transmitting information electrically by means of two complementary signals sent on two separate wires. The technique can be used for both analog signaling, as in some audio systems, and digital signaling, as in RS-422, RS-485, Ethernet , PCI Express and USB...
. Serial SCSI added another three transport types, each with one or more connector types. Manufacturers have frequently chosen connectors based on factors of size, cost, or convenience at the expense of compatibility.
SCSI often makes use of cable
Cable
A cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. In mechanics cables, otherwise known as wire ropes, are used for lifting, hauling and towing or conveying force through tension. In electrical engineering cables are used to carry...
s to connect devices together; in a typical example, a socket on a computer motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
would have one end of a cable plugged into it, while the other end of the cable plugged into a disk drive or other device. This would mean that four connectors were involved in wiring the disk drive and computer together: the connector on the motherboard, the connectors at each end of the cable, and the connector on the disk drive. It is sometimes possible to have cables which have different types of connectors on them, and some cables can have as many as 16 connectors (allowing 16 devices to be wired together). Some types of connectors are typically used inside a computer or disk drive case, while others are used to connect a computer to a separate device such as a scanner or external disk drive.
Nomenclature
Many connector designations consist of an abbreviation for the connector family, followed by a number indicating the number of pins. For example, "CN36" (also written "CN-36" or "CN 36") would be a 36-pin CentronicsCentronics
Centronics Data Computer Corporation was a pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name.-The beginning:Centronics began as a division of Wang Laboratories...
-style connector. For some connectors (such as the D-subminiature
D-subminiature
The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems....
family) use of the hyphen or space is more common, for others (like the "HD50") less so.
Parallel SCSI
Parallel SCSI allows for attachment of up to 16 devices to the SCSI bus, thus cables may have up to 16 connectors. It is unusual, however, for external cables (those that run between enclosures) to have more than 2.IDC Header
Early generations of SCSI hard drive assembliesHard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
generally had two connectors (power and communication) for 8-bit units, and either two or three connectors for 16-bit units. The power connector was typically the same 4-pin female Molex
Molex
Molex is a leading global supplier of electronic interconnectors. Molex sells over 100,000 products, including everything from electrical and fiber optic interconnect solutions to switches and application tooling....
connector used in many other internal computer devices. The communication connectors on the drives were usually a 50 (for 8-bit SCSI) or 68 pin male (for 16-bit SCSI) "IDC
Insulation-displacement connector
An Insulation-displacement connector, insulation-displacement technology/termination or insulation-piercing connector is an electrical connector designed to be connected to the conductor of an insulated wire or cable by a connection process which forces a selectively sharpened blade or blades...
header" which has two rows of pins, 0.1 inches apart. This connector has no retaining screws to secure the connectors together, and ribbon cable
Ribbon cable
A ribbon cable is a cable with many conducting wires running parallel to each other on the same flat plane. As a result the cable is wide and flat. Its name comes from the resemblance of the cable to a piece of ribbon.Ribbon cables are usually seen for internal peripherals in computers, such as...
s are both inconveniently wide and somewhat delicate, so this connector style was primarily used for connections inside of a computer or peripheral enclosure (as opposed to connecting two enclosures to each other). Thus it is often called an "internal SCSI connector." It is worth noting that this type of header was used for most internal connections in a typical desktop PC until recent times, including the 40-pin (two rows of 20) version used for ATA
AT Attachment
Parallel ATA , originally ATA, is an interface standard for the connection of storage devices such as hard disks, solid-state drives, floppy drives, and optical disc drives in computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee...
disk drives.
While the female connector is slotted such that a cable with a matching keyed male connector can not be inserted upside-down, some manufacturers (including Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
) supplied internal cables with male connectors that did not have the key, allowing for incorrect (and possibly damaging) connections.
In most cases, the host adapter
Host adapter
In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter connects a host system to other network and storage devices...
would have a similar header-style connection. In some cases, though, the host adapter end of the cable would use a different connector. For example, in the Sun 260 series chassis (used for the Sun 3/260 and Sun 4/260 computers), the connector was the same 3-row 96-pin connector used to attach peripheral cards to the VMEbus
VMEbus
VMEbus is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as ANSI/IEEE 1014-1987. It is physically based on Eurocard sizes, mechanicals and connectors , but uses its own signalling system,...
backplane
Backplane
A backplane is a group of connectors connected in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors forming a computer bus. It is used as a backbone to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete...
.
SCA
Eventually, there was a desire to combine power and data signals into a single connector. This allows for quick drive replacement, more reliable connections, and is more compact.Most parallel SCSI disk-drives now utilize an 80-pin SCA
Single Connector Attachment
Single Connector Attachment, or SCA, is a type of connection for the internal cabling of SCSI systems. There are two versions of this connector: the SCA-1, which is deprecated, and SCA-2, which is currently in use in most systems...
(Single Connector Attachment) connector. This connector includes a power connection and also has long and short pins which enable hot swapping
Hot swapping
Hot swapping and hot plugging are terms used to describe the functions of replacing computer system components without shutting down the system...
. Note that this connector is primarily found on disk drive HDA's
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
(and of course the mating enclosure backplane connector).
External
First Generation
Standardization was perhaps less consistent in the early days of SCSI manufacture.Early SCSI interfaces commonly used a 50-pin micro ribbon
Micro ribbon
The micro ribbon or miniature ribbon connector is a common type of electrical connector used particularly in computer and telecommunications applications. Popularly referred to as a Centronics connector due to the widely used Centronics parallel interface, it is also known as a Telco, Amphenol,...
connector. This connector is similar to the 36-pin connector used by Centronics
Centronics
Centronics Data Computer Corporation was a pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name.-The beginning:Centronics began as a division of Wang Laboratories...
for the parallel interface on their printers, thus the connector became popularly known as "Centronics SCSI" or "CN-50". It is also referred to as a "SCSI-1 connector"; since many connectors have been used for SCSI-1, this can be confusing.
were less expensive to make, but compromised functionality. Further, DB-25s were commonly used for RS-232 serial cables and also to connect parallel printers, meaning that users might accidentally try to use completely inappropriate cables, since the printer and serial cables would fit the connector properly and be hard to visually distinguish. The DB-25's only advantage was that it was smaller than a CN50.
Sun Microsystems and Data General
Data General
Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation. Their first product, the Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer...
used a 50-pin 3-row DD-50
D-subminiature
The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems....
connector, which was sometimes incorrectly called a "DB-50" or "HDB-50". Sun also used DB-25s on a few products.
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
mostly used the CN-50, but the VAXstation 3100 and DECstation 3100/2100 made use of a MALE 68-pin connector on the rear of the workstation. This connector looks like it would be a high density Wide SCSI-2 connector, but is actually 8-bit SCSI-1.
Target Disk Mode
Target Disk Mode is a boot mode unique to Macintosh computers.When a Mac that supports Target Disk Mode is started with the 'T' key held down, its operating system does not boot...
" in Apple documentation), meaning that they could appear to be disk drives when attached to another computer's SCSI controller (a feature later reimplemented over FireWire for later, non-SCSI Mac hardware).
IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's early RS6000 workstations sometimes used a "High Density Centronics" connector, which was a Centronics-style connector with smaller pins and shell. For some reason it had 60 pins, and is thus known as the "HDCN60"
Certain Japanese digital camera manufacturers wanted to put SCSI into their equipment, but conventional connectors would have been too large. Like IBM, they used a miniaturized Centronics connector, but this one had 50 pins, and was called the "HPCN50".
Some manufacturers used a DC-37
D-subminiature
The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems....
connector, often incorrectly referred to as a DB-37. These will most commonly be seen on three-cable systems, which are typically 16-bit or 32-bit "Wide SCSI" systems. Extra confusion is generated here since this connector was also frequently used with SMD disk drives, which are completely incompatible with SCSI drives.
post SCSI-2
As time went on, some manufacturers desired connectors even smaller than the SCSI-2 connector. One such in somewhat common use was the VHDCIVHDCI
The Very High Density Cable Interconnect is a 68-pin connector that was introduced in the SPI-3 document of SCSI-3. The VHDCI connector is a very small connector that allows placement of four wide SCSI connectors on the back of a single PCI card slot. Physically, it looks like a miniature...
(Very High Density Cable Interconnect) connector, also known as an "AMP HPCN68M" (a manufacturer part number), and sometimes as "SCSI-5". There are 68 pins on the connector in two rows; the pins are 0.8 mm apart. This connector is reputed to suffer fewer bent pins than the 68-pin SCSI-2 connector despite its minuscule pins.
Interoperability
There are adapters between most types of parallel SCSI connector, and some companies will manufacture custom cables to guarantee having the correct connectors. An adapter from narrow to wide must include termination to work properly.Different SCSI standards use the same SCSI connectors as in HVD and LVD SCSI (High Voltage Differential and Low Voltage Differential) . HVD uses 15V while LVD uses 3.3V , so connecting an HVD device to an LVD host bus adaptor can blow the line drivers on the HBA , likewise an HVD HBA connected to an LVD device.
Similarly , connecting a (slow) SE single-ended device onto a (fast) LVD SCSI chain will cause the HBA to sync down to the lowest speed.
While interconnectivity of a number of devices may look straightforward, there are many pitfalls, and with older SE devices the cabling length becomes an issue as signal degrades.
Drive Caddies
Many manufacturers have devised systems in which a SCSI disk drive or other device was placed in a small "caddy" container (also called a "drive sled"), which carried connections for both power and data. The caddy or canister would be placed in a larger enclosure. Some of these systems allowed for hot swap (drives could be replaced with the system running), while others allowed "warm swap", in which the SCSI bus was "quiesced" (meaning all drive activity was stopped) but remained powered on with devices ready.Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
also made a drive caddy system for the Proliant line of servers. Compaq purchased DEC, and Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
later purchased Compaq, and the Proliant and StorageWorks names were reused on other storage products, including later hot-swap systems.
Some of these caddy systems were OEM
OEM
OEM means the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company.OEM may also refer to:-Computing:* OEM font, or OEM-US, the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981...
manufactured, which means that the same product could appear with numerous brand names and model identifications.
These Hot-Plug drives in caddies generally use 80 pin SCA
Single Connector Attachment
Single Connector Attachment, or SCA, is a type of connection for the internal cabling of SCSI systems. There are two versions of this connector: the SCA-1, which is deprecated, and SCA-2, which is currently in use in most systems...
connectors (HP,Compaq, DELL from SCSI-3 to Ultra-320)
Serial SCSI
Serial SCSI disk-drives have recently been introduced. They use smaller connectors due to the reduced number of signals required. There are three types of physical layer transports specified:- Fibre ChannelFibre ChannelFibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards , an American National Standards Institute –accredited standards...
, also called FC - SAS, Serial Attached SCSISerial Attached SCSISerial Attached SCSI is a computer bus used to move data to and from computer storage devices such as hard drives and tape drives. SAS depends on a point-to-point serial protocol that replaces the parallel SCSI bus technology that first appeared in the mid 1980s in data centers and workstations,...
- SSA, the Serial Storage ArchitectureSerial Storage ArchitectureSerial Storage Architecture is a serial transport protocol used to attach disk drives to servers. It was invented by Ian Judd of IBM in 1990...
Additionally, there is the iSCSI
ISCSI
In computing, iSCSI , is an abbreviation of Internet Small Computer System Interface, an Internet Protocol -based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage...
transport, which is not present on the drives themselves, but is used to connect devices using TCP/IP networks. The drives themselves would use one of the other three connector types.
Connectors on the Drives (Internal)
- Fibre Channel FC-AL disk-drives include a 40-pin SCA-2 connectorFibre Channel electrical interfaceThe Fibre Channel electrical interface is one of two related standards that can be used to physically interconnect computer devices. The other standard is a Fibre Channel optical interface, which is not covered in this article....
- SSA disk-drives include a "unitized" composite connector
- SAS disk-drives have an SFF 8482 connector. This is "form factor compatible" with the connector on SATASataSata is a traditional dish from the Malaysian state of Terengganu, consisting of spiced fish meat wrapped in banana leaves and cooked on a grill.It is a type of Malaysian fish cake, or otak-otak...
disk drives, meaning that a SATA drive may be installed in an SAS drive bay, and the enclosure can use the Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol (STP) to make use of the drive. There are keyed parts to the connector on an SAS drive that will prevent it from being inserted into a SATA drive bay. - There is no defined iSCSI disk-drive connector
External Connectors
- Fibre Channel
- FC-AL cables initially used DE-9 connectorsFibre Channel electrical interfaceThe Fibre Channel electrical interface is one of two related standards that can be used to physically interconnect computer devices. The other standard is a Fibre Channel optical interface, which is not covered in this article....
(electrical) or SC connectors (optical) - More recent FC-AL cables use HSSDC connectorsFibre Channel electrical interfaceThe Fibre Channel electrical interface is one of two related standards that can be used to physically interconnect computer devices. The other standard is a Fibre Channel optical interface, which is not covered in this article....
(electrical) or LC connectors (optical). - Many FC-AL products now use an intermediate device called a GBICGBICA gigabit interface converter is a standard for transceivers, commonly used with Gigabit Ethernet and fibre channel in the 1990s...
(GigaBit Interface Converter) which allows more flexibility. GBICs can interconnect with a range of SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) connectors.
- FC-AL cables initially used DE-9 connectors
- SAS interconnections use either
- SFF 8484 multilane unshielded serial attachment connector (internal connector)
- SFF 8470 multilane copper connector, also known as an Infiniband connector (external connector)
- SFF 8087 Molex iPASS unshielded mini-multilane, reduced width internal connector
- SFF 8088 Molex iPASS shielded mini-multilane, reduced width external connector
- SSA cables are terminated with 9-pin micro-DD-subminiatureThe D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems....
connectors - iSCSI may be interconnected by any means used to build a TCP/IP network, since the SCSI commands are simply being carried over TCP/IP.