Is SCSI considered to be retro?

Question

Inspired by the recent PATA discussion, it occurred to me that deciding whether SCSI was on topic or not would be a highly relevant point to consider. SCSI has been used in machines since the 1980s, but is technically still available, although its usages have really retreated to the fringes of computing. (SCSI protocols survive in modern operating systems, but the hardware is relatively uncommonly found.)

That all having been said, although I can hook up a SCSI hard disk to my 1985 Amiga, I can also put a SCSI controller card in a modern PC and run that same hard disk under modern Linux or BSD, and probably Windows 10 too depending on the SCSI controller I use.

My instinct is that SCSI is so peripheral (pardon the pun) in the modern computing word that for all intents and purposes, it is retro, but let's talk about it.

Answer 1

Yes

• Parallel SCSI was used and commonly found in retro computers like the Amiga, the Atari ST, the original Apple Macintosh series among others retro workstations.
• The SCSI Parallel standard was standardized in 1986 which is pretty old by today's standards

However...

We there is now newer SCSI standard that uses serial connections and differ drastically from the conventional parallel port. See Serially Attached SAS (SAS) and UAS among others. Since these are recent technologies and associated with modern computers, discussion of these should clearly be off-topic.

So probably only Parallel SCSI should be considered retro.

Answer 2

SCSI and 80-pin SCA was phased out of industry support in about 2006. The largest available server-grade SCSI drive was 300 gigabytes. It is impossible to buy new SCSI / SCA drives at this point, and anything you may find is "new old stock".

For example:

• Dell PowerEdge 1800/1850/2800/2850 servers in 2005-2006 used SCSI/SCA.
• Dell PowerEdge 1900/1950/2900/2950 servers in 2006 used SAS/SATA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dell_PowerEdge_Servers#Generation_8

Answer 3

Its not just the Narrow SCSI either. I would consider HVD and LVD (High and Low voltage Differential (wide) SCSI) also retro because they have been completely surpassed by newer SAS and SATA standards.