[Leica] SCSI card for scanner

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

Folks:  I recently bought my work computer when it came off lease.  The
old ISA SCSI card I've been using won't work, because my "new" PC has PCI
slots only.  Which means that I'm going to have to find a new method to
connect my Canon FS-4000 film scanner to the computer.

I ran the scanner on USB this weekend, and it is significantly slower than
before.  It takes about 8.5 minutes for a 4000 dpi scan with IR cleaning
(Vuescan).  On the old machine, with SCSI, it was more like 6.5 minutes
for the same task. Unfortunately the scanner is USB 1.1, not 2.  So even
though I have USB 2 slots, it does me no good for the scanner.

After some research, the economical alternatives are:

1. Buy an Adaptec 2930 SCSI card ($99 new, about $20 on that auction
site).

2. Buy a Startek PCISCSI2 card ($41 at CompUSA. 10 mbps, as opposed to 20
mbps for the Adaptec. I don't know if this will make any difference with
the scanner).

3. Buy a SCSI to USB-2 adapter.  Adaptec makes one for $80.

Does anyone have experience with the latter 2 options?  If the Startek
card is as good as the Adaptec for the scanner, it might be worth not
having to deal with the auction site.

Also, does anyone know how to tell the difference between an Adaptec 2930
PCI card for the PC as opposed to one for the Mac, if the seller has no
box and doesn't know which system it came from?  :-)

Thanks,
--Peter