A SCSI connector is used to connect computer parts that communicate with each other via the SCSI standard. 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 connectors or optical connectors. There have been a large variety of SCSI connectors in use at one time or another in the computer industry. 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 megatransfer/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.
A stack of external SCSI devices displaying various SCSI connectors
From top to bottom: VHDCI, HD50, HD68, CN50
SCSI hard drives showing 80-pin SCA connector (top), and separate 68-pin and power connectors plus configuration jumpers (bottom)
SCSI backplane with 80-pin SCA connectors. Hard Drives are mounted on proprietary hot-swappable caddies.
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced in the 1980s and has seen widespread use on servers and high-end workstations, with new SCSI standards being published as recently as SAS-4 in 2017.
Adaptec ACB-4000A SASI card from 1985
Assorted Parallel SCSI connectors
Bus terminator with top cover removed