In article <199802042028.PAA07323@Twig.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> you write:
> As for Q-bus SCSI vs Q-bus IDE...if someone builds a Q-bus SCSI board,
> I'll buy one, up to (say) 200 USD.  If someone builds a Q-bus IDE
> board, I wouldn't take it unless you *gave* it to me shipping prepaid.
> 
> Why?  Because everything else I have is SCSI.  Two machines chez moi

Ditto. I've worked hard to eradicate everything IDE here. The remaining
3 drives are: 2 (120M and 40M) in a 386 box used as a router/firewall
(the machine was assembled _entirely_ from stuff in the spare parts
closet, and we had those two disks sitting there unused. Plus, ISA SCSI
controllers are expensive for what you get. I'd rather spend the bucks
on replacing the whole system). There's also a 1G IDE drive on a DPS PAR
(motion JPEG board). Since the PAR only does IDE, we're pretty much
stuck with that one. Other than that, I'm loathe to buy any more IDE
drives at all. Given the amount of hardware shuffling we do, it makes
sense to pick a single type of drive interface and go with it. SCSI is
the clear winner.

(Of course, the only VAXen I'm interested in right now, because
they're the only ones I could house and feed in the forseeable
future, already have SCSI. So, my vote shouldn't count for much.)

Also, SCSI is just *so* much more useful than IDE.  An IDE controller
board will get you hard drives, some limited types of removable media,
CD-ROM, and (if somebody writes an atapibus attachment for the st
driver) some limited types of tape drives.  Of course, those tape drives
are of the "cheap, PC-type crap" kind that any self-respecting VAX
enthusiast would turn his or her nose up at.

SCSI, on the other hand, gets you hard drives (and much larger ones, if
you like), many many types of removable media, CD-ROM, CD-burners
(though Q-bus VAX is probably a poor choice for CD-ROM burning), many
more kinds of tape drives (including "real" drives like DAT, DLT, or
even SCSI 9-track or TK50), scanners, and even things like SCSI
ethernet, serial ports, etc. 

Finally, wether for nostalgia or serious work, part of the attraction of
the VAX is the "serious", heavy-duty, no-compromises nature of the design. 
SCSI is the kind of "serious" interface with "serious" peripherals that
seems in keeping with this.  If your main interest is in running VAX
software, and you don't care if the hardware it's running on is low-end
PC stuff like IDE hard drives and ATAPI Travan tape drives, why not do
as I suggested a while back: buy a cheap Pentium and write a VAX
emulator for it. Much more economical and likely much faster. 

[BTW, I'm not convinced you really would need a CPU on a SCSI
controller board. Modern SCSI chips pretty much *are* CPUs, and do
quite a lot for you. Assuming that you want to use the MI SCSI
subsystem (and you probably do), these chips probably do almost as much
work offloaded from the main CPU as you can reasonably do or would want
to.]