Settle an argument: was SCSI ever a "consumer" technology?

@hackaday While I had plenty of it, it did not have an everyman-accessible marketing name. We nerds couldn't even decide between scuzzy or sexy.

@hackaday I mean, yes? But also really no.
It was a standard and got used- but by a relatively tiny subset of people (compared to the general public). I’d say it’s a little like FireWire in that way (not a lot of consumer-level devices with it- and I know, early iPods used it, but those were before the device *really* blew up, and by then they’d gone usb).

@hackaday

Uhh, did you ever try to install a printer in the 1990s?

@hackaday

Not at first... but most technology moves down from cutting edge to corporate/military to normals.

@hackaday the SCSI legacy is the interface layer that is still used for USB drives.

@hackaday yes. Pro-sumer if you want to make that distinction.
You need to go back a while though :)

@hackaday I'd say yes as there were plenty of SCSI scanners back in the day.

@hackaday Several generations of Macs would say yes. Plus I had a TI ‘468-based laptop with a built in SCSI port.

@hackaday the reality is "almost". the scsi zip drive was probably the biggest thing anybody ever used scsi for, probably nothing else comes close.

@hackaday it was sold in any computer store. We had an SCSI connected flatbed scanner at home, because the alternative (parallel port) was unbelievably slow. And I think our first CD burner was also SCSI.

@hackaday Yes. Although with the caveat that the computer retail market then was much smaller and more technical than anything today. So 1980s “consumer” != 2025 “consumer”…

@hackaday pretty sure we had that connector for our PowerPC Mac’s scanner and potentially even was used earlier than that for our external CD drive for our Mac LCII or perhaps LCIII - can’t remember which we had exactly.

@hackaday SCSI burners were good too. Back in the day when disc burns often failed due to the IDE bus underrun errors, the SCSi bus had much more fair distribution of the SCSI bus I/O. This caused much less failed burns. You could also use your machine while a burn was going on. When a single burn could take 20-30mins, this was a great advantage of SCSI.

Once SATA came along with NCQ, most of these advantages were lost.

This is how I got introduced to SCSI, but I was definitely a prosumer.

@hackaday Never knew anyone who had them. They were always business and pro priced

@hackaday i had a Zip drive, and later the bigger Jazz drive, both SCSI, for my "consumer" backups, sure.

@va3nnw That's absolutely points in favor of "consumer!"

@hydrian definitely seemed more reliable back in the early days vs. IDE

@claudius very much consumer then!

@prozacchiwawa Very popular in the higher education sector.