SCSI is still seen by consumers as a high-end interface with plenty of potential problems. Which is, to a large extent, true, and is one reason why SCSI is conspicuous by its absence on Apple's iMac and virtually every entry-level PC. Unfortunately, some of the peripherals that can benefit from the SCSI interface are extremely useful to consumers. These include scanners, removable hard drives, tape drives and so on. Adaptec has potentially come up with the answer.

Similar to some of the parallel-to-SCSI adapters launched for PC users a few years ago, the USBConnect 2000 is basically a cable, with a USB connector at one end, a SCSI connector at the other and all the necessary conversion electronics crammed into the SCSI end. As you'd imagine, it simply plugs into any USB port on a PC, notebook or Apple machine, and provides near instant connectivity of SCSI peripherals. Up to seven peripherals can be daisy-chained together, and the device supports a maximum sustained transfer rate of 1MB/sec, equating to the FastSCSI protocol.

The cable terminates in a high-density 50-pin high-density male connector, which is fine, but perhaps a little high-end for most potential applications of the USBConnect 2000; it's typically high-performance hard drives that are fitted with such a connector. Adaptec has realised this, and includes a 50-pin to 25-pin DB25 adapter for the USBConnect 2000, making it ideal for use with removable storage devices such as Iomega's Zip.

There are one or two caveats, however. The USBConnect 2000 takes its power from the termination line of the SCSI device. Since Iomega's Zip drive, and some scanners, don't provide such a supply, you have to make sure that at least one device on the SCSI chain does. Also, this is still a SCSI device at heart, so device IDs and termination must still be taken into account. Generally, though, these are not likely to be major problems, and the cross-platform connectivity of the USBConnect 2000 will outweigh them.

Working with Windows 98 or later and MacOS 8.5 or later, the USBConnect 2000 is a simple, clever tool to add SCSI connectivity to USB-equipped PCs. It's not totally without failings, and performance isn't as stunning as it could be with a dedicated PCI SCSI adapter, but it opens up a new market of peripherals to users who are unwilling to attack their PCs with a screwdriver.