The perfect laptop for SCSI scanners

March 12, 2024 by Jim

Back in the late 1990s to early 2000s USB wasn’t quite as commonplace as it is now; furthermore, USB 1.0 and 1.1 were very slow with maximum theoretical transfer speeds of 1.5Mbps and 12Mbps respectively. To combat the slow speeds, alternative connectivity was often used, either in the form of SCSI or FireWire

SCSI offers throughput starting around 10Mbps, so is still slow by modern standards. The issue with SCSI is that it generally requires an ISA or PCI slot in a desktop computer. This in turn means more space and less portability.

Although I do own more “retro” desktop computers than I care to admit, I don’t always have the space to leave one out and ready to go. This sparked my desire to find an affordable laptop setup that would allow connection to SCSI scanners.

USB to SCSI

This is a thing, but not a thing that I have any experience with. From what I have read (so this is second hand information), these devices are mainly aimed at connecting SCSI hard drives and optical drives via USB and as such can be temperamental with scanner hardware. They are also fairly rare and often sell for £150 GBP or more. Quite an expensive option for something that may not be too reliable.

PCMCIA to SCSI

If you can find one at a reasonable price, PCMCIA to SCSI adapters will likely be a reliable option as PCMCIA is based on ISA, although not 100% compatible; this should allow it to act more like a standard ISA SCSI card. Alas these, devices are also quite rare and expensive, often selling for £100 GBP or more.

Apple PowerBook G3

Some Apple PowerBook G3 laptops have SCSI built in from the factory, although in the obscure form of a HDI-30 port; HDI-30 can be converted to the more standard SCSI interfaces including DB-25, Centronics and 50-pin Wide SCSI.

Although very promising, this will require a scanner that works with Mac OS 7 to 9, or possibly early OS X

If your scanner supports Mac OS and this is the way you would like to go, there is a list of SCSI compatible PowerBooks on EveryMac.

I will warn though, that earlier PowerBooks can become quite expensive and have their own host of problems, such as degrading rubberised coatings and brittle plastics.

Dell Latitude D-Series

My preferred method, which can be had for around £40 GBP and up is the Dell Latitude D-Series of laptops.

These laptops have a lot going for them:

• Will happily run Microsoft Windows XP through to Windows 10
• Core 2 Duo platform (older models are Centrino branded Pentium III)
• 2.5″ SATA drives offering easy upgrade to SSD’s for boosted performance
• Standard SODIMM memory modules for simple upgrades
• Well documented hardware manuals allowing for easy repair

As many of you may already know, this series of early to mid 2000’s business laptops don’t have SCSI capabilities! This is where we introduce the Dell PD01X Docking Station.

PD01X Docking Station

Portability takes a slight downturn at this point, but ease of storage and quick setup isn’t compromised much. The PD01X docking station is a business dock for Dell D-Series laptops, designed to sit on a desk waiting for an office worker to return and clip their laptop onto it, turning it into a hybrid Laptop / Desktop.

All the usual ports are found on the dock (for the time) such as more USB 2.0 ports, Serial, Parallel and PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.

The main party trick is a single PCI as often found in desktop computers which allows for cheap expansion.

For the added flexibility, these docks can be found at reasonable prices on eBay. I recently picked one up for £20 GBP including shipping; had I been more patient, I could probably have paid less.

Laptop Models

There is a large range of Dell D-Series Laptops, a brief overview is listed below. All models have PCMCIA Type-I / Type-II and IEEE1394 4-pin FireWire.

In short, models starting “4” have a 12.1″ screen, “6” have a 14.1″ screen, “8” have a 15.4″ screen. Models ending “00” or “10” are Pentium III based, Models ending “20” have a Core Duo processor and models ending “30” have a Core 2 Duo processor.

Also worth noting is that the 12.1″ D4xx models do not have an internal optical drive and rely on a modified USB and power external D-Bay optical drive.