[rescue] zuluscsi wide sca80 or scsiknife sca as replacement to hd in sun ultra 60

[md.benson at gmail.com]

I think the whole “it’s not an emulator” argument misses the boat completely on why people refer to BlueSCSI or ZuluSCSI as an “emulator”, aside from that being a catch-all (often incorrect) term for “it does old stuff with new stuff” phrase.

The reason it’s referred to widely as an emulator is *not* because it’s “emulating SCSI” because, as people gave often pointed out, it does not. It is an actual SCSI device capable of handling multiple IDs and LUNS. That’s in the spec.
The emulation part is that the device is capable of storing and behaving like multiple actual devices like hard drives, optical disks, zip disks, NICs, printers (yes that’s in the works), etc. to “emulate” the presence of a device, complete with it’s original device identifiers if required (hi, yes DEC, Apple we see you). So it’s emulating the *devices* not the SCSI part.

Calling it a SCSI SSD is misleading also as it has none of the wear levelling or flash management features a drive we consider to be a modern SSD does. I realise “SSD” literally means Solid State Device or Solid Stare Drive (technically correct as it uses commodity solid state media) but it ignores the other utility features that the modern implementations of the BlueSCSI/ZuluSCSI offer. SCSI2SD was much closer akin to a SCSI SSD as it was using almost block-for-block mapping. These do not. They use free floating files on a FAT32/exFAT card, and go beyond “just storage”.

It’s not a SCSI emulator. It’s a SCSI device with a built in *device* emulator.

Also, on balance, very few people care, it’s a thing that does SCSI and I for one just appreciate it exists. 

— 

Mark

> On 26 May 2026, at 00:11, Dave McGuire via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 5/25/26 19:02, Mouse via rescue wrote:
>>>> Looking for others who have tried scsi emulators instead of a real
>>>> hd.
>> What's a SCSI "emulator"?  So far all it seems to mean is a SCSI device
>> backed by some defined non-SCSI interface, such as SD, rather than by
>> something (like spinning rust) that's integral with the SCSI
>> implementation.
> 
>  He means a SCSI SSD.  Lots of people (who haven't read the SCSI standard) call them "emulators".
> 
>          -Dave
> 
> --
> Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
> New Kensington, PA
> 
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