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What to do with 6100/60?
- Thread starter LarBob
- Start date
Get a new CD Drive for it, preferably a 600-unit either internal or external. It is not that difficult.
If it's an external, any SCSI Drive should work on it. Just make sure you have the proper termination on it.
EDIT: HOW is the tray broken? If it is just the tray itself, you can replace that, it is not that hard to do. The problem is getting one that is from the exact model type. Like A Panasonic CD Drive tray will only fit a Panasonic CD Drive - it does not matter if it is IDE, SCSI or some oddball interface from the early days of PCs. So remove the Internal CD Drive and see who made it (Sony, Panasonic, et al...) and then go look for a similar old PC unit. Then remove the tray from that, compare it to the first and if it matches, swap it, and your Internal Apple CD Drive should be fixed.
If it's an external, any SCSI Drive should work on it. Just make sure you have the proper termination on it.
EDIT: HOW is the tray broken? If it is just the tray itself, you can replace that, it is not that hard to do. The problem is getting one that is from the exact model type. Like A Panasonic CD Drive tray will only fit a Panasonic CD Drive - it does not matter if it is IDE, SCSI or some oddball interface from the early days of PCs. So remove the Internal CD Drive and see who made it (Sony, Panasonic, et al...) and then go look for a similar old PC unit. Then remove the tray from that, compare it to the first and if it matches, swap it, and your Internal Apple CD Drive should be fixed.
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It will depend on your budget and what is available out there, but as Elfen said, getting a working CD drive in there is your best bet. I have parted out enough early PPC models to have a small stack of them and I bet that others have too. I use mine to replace ones that go bad. You may want to post a request for a working CD Drive (the model no. is on the top of your broken one) in the trading post along with your approximate location and what you can pay for the drive/shipping and see if you can find a replacement.
You should also see if you can clean/lubricate your floppy drive. There are guides for older drives online, but I don't know if there are ones for the later drives, like the one in the 6100.
I'm not sure if there are other alternatives (netboot, or using another mac to install onto your hard drive) - those options would depend on what you have available to you, from a hardware perspective.
You should also see if you can clean/lubricate your floppy drive. There are guides for older drives online, but I don't know if there are ones for the later drives, like the one in the 6100.
I'm not sure if there are other alternatives (netboot, or using another mac to install onto your hard drive) - those options would depend on what you have available to you, from a hardware perspective.
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Can one still get a PDS to Nubus adapter to install a fast etherenet adapter in it? I've come across a 6100/60 that might make a nifty "WGS" storage unit with a pair of CF2SCSI adapters. (one in each bay)
Also, does the SCSI2SD work in these?
It likely won't read a burned cd with the stock extension. Have you tested it with, say, a store bought audio cd or with something factory made from the period?
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I can't believe I didn't see and reply to this earlier. I actually got a 6100 in either 2014 or 2015.
I'll answer some questions, first:
If you were going to build a 6100 as a file server, I'd start with the 6100 you have and add one scsi2sd to it. If you need more capacity after that, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run more than one.
In terms of other uses? The 6100 is a pretty nice machine, all things considered. It would make sense as a daily driver system with the 7.1 install that shipped with it, or 7.6.1 (what I happen to have on mine, but I've been meaning to track down the original install.) You probably could run 9.0 or 9.1 on it, but you'd want to do that on a pretty well equipped system. 8.1 is probably where I'd go for HFS+ usage on the scsi2sd. You could put a contemporary version of photoshop on it, or put macssh and use it as an SSH console, it'll do anything a 68k will do, but perhaps slightly better, and it'll do almost anything a later PPC will do, but slower and probably not much in the way of late '90s 6500-iMac-PMacG3 3d gaming.
I'll answer some questions, first:
- There is no reason you shouldn't be able to find a PDS adapter, and then use that to install a fast ethernet card. Although, it may take a while to find a riser and a satisfactory card. I don't know what the market for those looks for gith now, but all the parts exist.
- A 6100 with a SCSI2SD and either ASIP or plain OS 7/8/9 filesharing would be fine. File server duties are one of the (very few) situations where I generally, relatively wholeheartedly, suggest running system 8.1. Also consider just putting a single big SD card into the SCSI2SD, I was under the impression you could configure different LUNs or partitions on the same card, so you can have a 2GB "boot into system 8.1" partition and a ~30-gig "HFS+ data" partition. (This would be a compelling reason to use 8.1 on a 68k as well, but there's also nothing technically wrong with building a big HFS partition.)
If you were going to build a 6100 as a file server, I'd start with the 6100 you have and add one scsi2sd to it. If you need more capacity after that, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run more than one.
In terms of other uses? The 6100 is a pretty nice machine, all things considered. It would make sense as a daily driver system with the 7.1 install that shipped with it, or 7.6.1 (what I happen to have on mine, but I've been meaning to track down the original install.) You probably could run 9.0 or 9.1 on it, but you'd want to do that on a pretty well equipped system. 8.1 is probably where I'd go for HFS+ usage on the scsi2sd. You could put a contemporary version of photoshop on it, or put macssh and use it as an SSH console, it'll do anything a 68k will do, but perhaps slightly better, and it'll do almost anything a later PPC will do, but slower and probably not much in the way of late '90s 6500-iMac-PMacG3 3d gaming.
Fairly easy to source, but that combo's only 10baseT, OP wants to install a faster NIC.
Quick correction... the SCSI2SD exposes multiple SCSI ID's, not LUNs, when you use it in multi-device mode, where you slice up a microSD card into multiple "devices" within the SCSI2SD-util configuration tool.
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No, they're not that difficult to find. What he specified wanting was a 10/100 ethernet card. I'm not convinced that's worthwhile for this situation.
Thank you! I had known it was something. If you do that with a sufficiently big SD card there's probably not a specifically great reason to run more than one SCSI2SD, especially in a machine like the 6100 that only has one bus.
LarBob, a bit late but just a heads up: The 300i (and 300e external) cd rom found in the 6100 does not play well with CD-RW discs. I've never gotten a 300 based drive to read one. However, it works pretty well with CD-R discs (at least when they are burned at 4x speed).
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