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Insane SCSI to FW prices
- Thread starter LaPorta
- Start date
Probably the same reason SCSI to USB is 100+ dollars........ It’s called price-gouging. Make a specialty item in China for $3.00 and sell it $350. Stupid, isn’t it?
Not the case at all:
1 - Specialty items linking obsolete/obsolescent interfaces for an incredibly limited market = low demand
2 - You're dismissing R&D cost amortization over production of a limited supply to meet that demand.
- - - - R&D and inventory/distribution trump low, but much more significant cost of doing a low production run.
3 - RetroComputing is an all but insignificant portion of the market for such things, think video etc. still limited demand.
For something like SCSI2SD, RetroComputing is a small, but significant percentage of demand. (a fact documented in another thread)
Demand from a very large installed base of Keyboards/other music related gear along with industrial equipment still in productive use saddled with FDD and SCSI interfaces would be what keeps products like SCSI2SD affordable.
Basically, you're lucky to have these two adapters for those interfaces available at any price.
1 - Specialty items linking obsolete/obsolescent interfaces for an incredibly limited market = low demand
2 - You're dismissing R&D cost amortization over production of a limited supply to meet that demand.
- - - - R&D and inventory/distribution trump low, but much more significant cost of doing a low production run.
3 - RetroComputing is an all but insignificant portion of the market for such things, think video etc. still limited demand.
For something like SCSI2SD, RetroComputing is a small, but significant percentage of demand. (a fact documented in another thread)
Demand from a very large installed base of Keyboards/other music related gear along with industrial equipment still in productive use saddled with FDD and SCSI interfaces would be what keeps products like SCSI2SD affordable.
Basically, you're lucky to have these two adapters for those interfaces available at any price.
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I've already got a SCSI to FW converter from way back when...I just didn't know it was that valuable. I simply chalked it up to bloat. For instance, people here sell things for reasonable prices. Similarly, a separate hobby of mine (I own a pinball machine), many times has people trying to sell a machine on eBay for $3k, while people in the know in a community will gladly sell/buy it for $1500. I figured similar forces were at work here.
It's only that "valuable" if they sell regularly at those prices. Similar thing in my camera/lens collection. Asking prices for "buy it now" aren't real, they're highball starting points for haggling in private messaging and the actual sale price is never documented.
Ebay should report on all sale prices or at the very least charge for repeated listings of like or similar items by a seller at absurd price levels as an in for haggling on the sly. Curbing such practices should be a priority.
Some sellers start out high and reduce pricing until an item sells. Price for the LC version of the Radius pivot card appears to have been halved not long after the initial listing.
In the meantime, some of this stuff is scarce as hens teeth and will never be available new at any low price point, much less what folks around here insist upon thinking of as "market pricing."
I was originally going to get a IIGS SCSI card until I saw every single one on eBay was 300 dollars...
Good grief, you're right! I had no idea.
I found an Entegra, I think, adapter in a box of my cables a while back and thought "I'll never need this."
(Of course I'd need drivers that are probably OS9/XP only.)
I guess I should hang on to it.
Not necessarily. The FW to SCSI converter I have requires nothing. In fact, it is two-way. You can have FW drives (small enough) show up on a classic Mac. Heck, I once got a Mac Classic's internal HD to show up on my iMac!
All the ones I saw were just sold as "Apple II SCSI Card" with 1988 ROM dates, aside from a RAMFast card selling for an incredible 500 dollars.
I used to think Amiga stuff was insane but you can actually get lower-end Amiga accelerators for just under $200...
I'm likely to agree that it's not gouging for no good reason. As far as I happen to know these devices haven't been manufactured in a few years, so it's not exactly as if someone's buying parts for $3 or even $30 and then marking up the price 10 or 100x.
These devices were manufactured for a couple years back when it made more sense to buy a Firewire adapter for your Jaz drive than to buy a new Jaz drive (And, thinking about it: IIRC the Jaz drive only ever really shipped in SCSI versions) or to move to a new type of storage/transfer cartridge altogether.
Or, if you had a bunch of SCSI peripherals that cost more than storage peripherals tended to do (especially once people started to move to USB/Firewire external disks rather than cartridge systems and didn't want a multi-machine workflow (which I tend to advocate for these days, because often the machine best equipped to acquire an image or a video isn't necessarily the best one you have to edit the content or ultimately transfer it to the Internet, but that's a much newer concern, really.
At this point, in some circumstances, it might be easier to think about just having, say, a G3 or G4 tower equipped with both SCSI and USB/FW to use with peripherals like these.
(Except the SCSI2SD, explanation below)
Depending on how your SCSI2SD is positioned physically, you should be able to take the card out and put it in an SD card reader for use on a more modern system. I believe you can also (on the v6) mount the card over Micro USB. I wouldn't waste a scsi/fw or scsi/usb adapter on that.
These devices were manufactured for a couple years back when it made more sense to buy a Firewire adapter for your Jaz drive than to buy a new Jaz drive (And, thinking about it: IIRC the Jaz drive only ever really shipped in SCSI versions) or to move to a new type of storage/transfer cartridge altogether.
Or, if you had a bunch of SCSI peripherals that cost more than storage peripherals tended to do (especially once people started to move to USB/Firewire external disks rather than cartridge systems and didn't want a multi-machine workflow (which I tend to advocate for these days, because often the machine best equipped to acquire an image or a video isn't necessarily the best one you have to edit the content or ultimately transfer it to the Internet, but that's a much newer concern, really.
At this point, in some circumstances, it might be easier to think about just having, say, a G3 or G4 tower equipped with both SCSI and USB/FW to use with peripherals like these.
(Except the SCSI2SD, explanation below)
Depending on how your SCSI2SD is positioned physically, you should be able to take the card out and put it in an SD card reader for use on a more modern system. I believe you can also (on the v6) mount the card over Micro USB. I wouldn't waste a scsi/fw or scsi/usb adapter on that.
I certainly didn’t think it was gouging, just amazed that there is that much of a market. For instance, there could be only two of something left, but if no one cares or wants it, it isn’t going to command a very high price. So, there must be some demand.
As for your SCSI/FW comment, I’ve already got that covered: PowerTower Pro with FW PCI card (which only cost $10). Swiss Army knife!
As for your SCSI/FW comment, I’ve already got that covered: PowerTower Pro with FW PCI card (which only cost $10). Swiss Army knife!
There’s a *lot* of them on eBay from China (If I remember correctly) so it kinda looked as if they were still being made, but maybe not.
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