Is my CD drive SCSI?

[Emo]

how can I find out if my CD drive has that?

-Emo

[JungleMan]

The answer is no. No Compaq desktops have SCSI in them, even my computer doesn't have SCSI..

[Emo]

what is that anyway?

(so I'm guessing my HDD doenst have it either??)

-Emo

[JungleMan]

It's a super fast transfer interface mostly used for servers but it's also very expensive. It's also dying out as IDE is cheaper and almost as fast.

[kalicki]

High speed data transfer, mainly used in servers and stuff where it needs the speed...

[JoshT]

Can't you just open up your computer and look and the drives or cables?

[HarryW]

It stands for 'Small Computer Systems Interface'. It's an alternative kind of device interface to IDE. It's not really all that much faster, but it's more consistent. Still, it is a bit faster. If you need to write data quickly (like if you're writing video to a file on-the-fly) then it's pretty essential, but for most purposes it's not worth it.

The easiest way to tell if you have any SCSI devices is to look at your computer's boot-up sequence. On the screen that shows up after the memory checks, there is a box that contains details of all your IDE devices. If you have an ATAPI CD-ROM drive (ie. an IDE drive) it will show up in that box along with any IDE hard drives or other IDE devices.

If you have a SCSI controller in your system, there will usually be another screen after the IDE screen that will display information about any SCSI devices you have on your system.

Your CD-ROM is almost certainly IDE, not SCSI. You will probably not see the SCSI screen since you probably don't have a SCSI controller.

[JoshT]

Hmm - isn't ATAPI just a cheap version of SCSI over IDE? There are true IDE CD-ROMs that aren't ATAPI.

[jim mcnamara]

I think you're kinda missing the point: the answer is:
NO SCSI on your box

[HarryW]

Josh: http://www.cnet.com/Resources/Info/G...rms/atapi.html