6100 with dead hd (replace with external zip?)

[Nathan]

So, the hard drive is dead (or it appears that way), which is a pity really. I did however acquire, fairly recently and by sheer accident, a scsi zip 100 drive from a junk pile at school. I don't have a scsi cable though, So, does anyone know what, if any, fundamental difference there is in the cable that goes from the drive to the computer for a scsi zip/parallel drive? Also, I assume it's possible to boot from a scsi zip drive, but can an installer find the drive by itself? I do have an untested set of system 7.0.1 (I think) install floppies, but I doubt that has the necessary drivers by default, so If I could get this to work (os floppies and zip drive would ideally be in working order -- but who can tell from looking...), how would I go about installing that os on a zip drive?

Also, if it's just a single drive, it's needs scsi termination enabled right? (the drive has a termination switch and a scsi id 5/6 switch)

 

[Byrd]

If you pull/throw out the dead internal SCSI HD, it will automatically boot up off the external Zip (with operating system installed), sans an extension. Alternately, pressing Command+Option+Shift+delete during bootup causes the Mac to ignore SCSI ID=0, which is the default ID of most internal HD's. The Mac will then search the SCSI chain in ascending order till it finds a drive in which it can boot from (I ripped this off from the old 68KMLA site!).

You could plug the Zip into your 6100 + blank disk, boot up off floppy and install Mac OS this way. I'm pretty sure that a DB25 parallel printer cable is not the same as a SCSI cable; even if the pinouts were the same SCSI cables have much better shielding and thicker gauge wire. And lastly, yes switch the Zip drive to terminated as it is on the end of the SCSI chain (in this case, on it's own but still "the end").

JB

 

[24bit]

From what I picked up by casual reading, there are two very similar ZIP 100 drives.

One is for parallel port and carries no jumpers on its back = bad, wont work with Macs.

The other is SCSI with jumpers between the ports = good, will work with Macs and can be used as boot volume.

If you should live in Europe, I am willing to donate a 25sub-D to 50-Centronics SCSI cable, as I own some spare ones.

If you have the money to spend, I would try to find a replacement HDD as long as they are available.

I have got a 68 pin drive in my 7100 with an 68/50pin adapter running perfectly.

Before discarding your HDD drive:

Is the 6100´s PRAM battery good?

Can you access the HDD after floppy boot?

Is your "dead" drive still seen on the bus?

Did you try to low-level format it?

 

[Nathan]

Yeah, I actually have both types of external Zip100 drive (parallel/scsi). At least one of the two parallel ones I know works for sure, I've tried it on windows xp, I even managed to find the drivers from iomega for it (which was good). The little diamond with a horizontal dash projecting out of it (SCSI symbol) and the jumpers were a dead giveaway about the scsi one even before I saw the diagram on the back.

Byrd:

I'm pretty sure that a DB25 parallel printer cable is not the same as a SCSI cable; even if the pinouts were the same SCSI cables have much better shielding and thicker gauge wire. And lastly, yes switch the Zip drive to terminated as it is on the end of the SCSI chain (in this case, on it's own but still "the end").

I agree in theory.The reason I ask is because I'm not referring to a normal parallel printer cable, I'm referring to the Zip branded cable (I only happen to have one, maybe two) that is used to connect the parallel port version to a computer. It's DB-25 on both sides, maybe even DB-25 M/M. The thing is I figure if it's just a straight through 25-pin cable, and assuming SCSI doesn't have any special connector swapping inside the cable that makes say pin 3 on one end pin 4 on the other, then it should be fine. I'd rather be sure though, and not break anything. If it at least worked, then I could be fairly comfortable hunting for an actual scsi cable.

24bit:

Before discarding your HDD drive:

Is the 6100´s PRAM battery good?

Can you access the HDD after floppy boot?

Is your "dead" drive still seen on the bus?

Did you try to low-level format it?

I'm pretty sure the PRAM battery is fine, I replaced it around 1-3 years ago because it was causing video output not to work properly somehow. I haven't tried booting from a floppy I don't think, or I tried and it wasn't working (little fuzzy on that at the moment, I'll take another look at it later today). I am unaware if it's seen on the bus, I seem to recall that it just wouldn't boot up. The computer turns on and appears to proceed to booting (looking at them monitor), but then either can't find or can't read the drive somehow (floppy with question maybe?). I'll have to double check on a few things, since I put it down with my stuff in the basement awhile ago because it wasn't working, I just thought I might try an alternative solution if I could find one. I'd rather not format it just yet, even if it's possible, since it did have some software on it from the previous owner that I don't have a copy of (I've never had a NEW mac personally, I just happen to collect computers, including old mac ones). Sorry to say, but I don't live in Europe. In any case, I believe (I could be wrong) that the external scsi ports and the back of the device are both DB-25.

I wish I had the money and luck to acquire a working SCSI drive, even if I needed an adapter, since the 6100 only has a 500mb drive and can theoretically take a 2-4GB drive at least, if I had system 7 or 7.5. The space might be an issue though, the performa's drive are packed pretty tightly and mine has a pc/dos card in it with, I think, a 486 on it that takes up some of the space inside the case. Almost wish i had a scsi drive, just so I could see if my recently acquired old powermac g4's scsi card would be able to read it. That and I also WISH I had a working cd-rom for the 6100 (mine seems to be stuck/jammed and/or broken) and a copy of os 8 or os 9 because the performa ought to be able to handle it, if pathetically. If wishes were money, we'd all be richer than a saudi arabian prince. :lol:

Thanks for the help guys, I'll get back to you after double checking on booting a floppy and see if I can get it to start up some kind of system disk.

 

[Nathan]

Eh, 24bit, how's your iMac doing. Mine's a little beat up (got it from some family friends a couple years ago), there's a screw or two gone and some minor cracking I think (naturally, all my fault). That and the speakers seem to crackle a bit, any insight on the speakers? I've got 2 other processors for it around here too I think... the original 233mhz and a second junk pile 333mhz I think with more memory than mine. Hopefully the second still works; I mean to try swapping that memory into mine, I'd infinitely prefer 512mb to 256mb (unfortunately I don't own a copy of the os 9 that's running on it, but whatever..), but the darn things are finicky about individual memory sticks it seems. Pity it wouldn't run OS X Tiger very well in any case (I bought myself a legitimate copy of tiger from someone on lemswap when I got my pm G4 from my college's junk pile along with a full complement of memory for that machine). Does yours have standard specs?

 

[24bit]

I have a working iMac (sort of) with faulty FBT connected to a FSI monitor from flea market.

As I bought the iMac brand new, its in rather good shape. There´s not much special inside, except for the SCSI host adapter in the mezzanine maybe. 10.3 and 9.2 do run if needed, but I recently switched to Hackintosh on AMD/Intel and SheepShaver.

Would be no surprise if one of my Mac´s HDDs would quit, but I cloned disks and saved the images on redundant USB drives.

For my personal needs of running old software SheepShaver or BasiliskII are perfect and quite fast on 10.6.8.

So my two remaining Macs mostly sit there idle, reminding me how insanely much money I gave away to get them new.