The SE/30 uses the 53C80 SCSI chip. The next step up is the 53C94 or 53C96 and it's not really substantially faster. After that, one gets into SCSI enhancements such as Fast, Ultra, and/or Wide. At that point, newer firmware would definitely be needed.

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Maybe that would be getting rather hard, but perhaps one could write some sort of patch which would contain the necessary firmware for the new chip.
Exactly how much faster is the 53c94/96? We can probably only go so fast, due to all the bottlenecks elsewhere in the system (the 16 MHz CPU probably being the most obvious). These may be fast enough to warrant the upgrade.

A faster chip could be added as a PDS card, but at this time, if one were going to build a PDS card, and was going to have to write firmware anyway, one might as well design a SATA card or maybe a USB card.

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Yeah, I suppose. But sticking with SCSI would avoid any incompatibilities the software (OS, ROM, etc.) might have with newer technologies (such as SATA and USB), at least for boot disks.
Maybe it could be some sort of all in one card, with relatively fast SCSI, SATA and USB. That is probably a bit too ambitious of me, but I like the idea nonetheless.

There must be someone in the world who could design and implement such a device.

c