A Pile of Stuff from Sweden!

[PotatoFi]

One of my friends in my professional community is Swedish. He said he had a bunch Mac stuff for me, and said he'd bring over what he could to a conference that we both attended here in the US. That was a couple of months ago... I'm finally getting the chance to post about it now!

• Apple Extended Keyboard II with ALPS White switches, Swedish layout.
  
• AppleCD 150 enclosure with an NEC Multispin drive. This one appears to use CD-ROM caddies which I don't have. I think I'd like to find a slightly newer Apple CD-ROM drive for this enclosure... but I'd be interested in hearing your comments! I have exactly zero experience with CD-ROM drives in the 68k Mac ecosystem.
  
• AAUI Ethernet Adapter. My friend @sclements has use for this, so it's going to him.
  
• System 7 Personal Upgrade Kit. I haven't cracked the box open, but it is most likely complete! The box got a bit crunched in various bags and luggage which I feel terrible about.
  
• Apple Stickers. I don't know that I'll ever be able to bring myself to use them!
  
• Various SCSI cables and adapters. Needed some of these VERY badly!
  
• The Mac Internet Tour Guide, Cruising the Internet the Easy way. This should be fun to flip through.
  
• Microphone. Completely sealed. I'm not sure what to do with this one other than just hang onto it.
  
• "Install me First" CD. Not sure what it is for. Sealed.
  
• Power Macintosh 6100-8100 "Install me First" floppy disks. Sealed!
  
• A whole bunch of Jaz and ZIP stuff. I've heard (from LGR, I think) that Jaz drives and disks were just awful. To be honest, I have no idea what to do with these.
  
  
  SCSI Iomega ZIP drive
  
• SCSI Iomega Jaz drive
  
• USB Iomega ZIP drive
  
• 2.5" internal Iomega Jaz drive in a 5.25" bay adapter
  
• 2.5" internal Iomega ZIP drive in a 5.25" bay adapter
  

The one that I'm the most excited about is the AppleCD drive. Would love to hear thoughts on what I should do with it, but I think it would be a very nice compliment to my newly acquired SE/30.

 

[Solvalou]

Very nice lot, definitely worth keeping the Zip SCSI stuff. I have amassed about 6 drives and only one is the 'thought after' SCSI type. Very useful for data transfer.

Nice to find an early external Apple CD drive too, pretty unusual to see someone replaced the drive though. If you can put it back to original, I would definitely recommend it. If not for looks, the OS will probably have an easier time detecting it without messing with extensions.

The keyboard, well what's not already been said about them? Better when it's in your native layout.

Good result. 

 

[Cory5412]

Nice haul!

I'd be interested in hearing your comments! I have exactly zero experience with CD-ROM drives in the 68k Mac ecosystem

That case would be a great home for the CD-ROM drive out of something like a 7200-9600 era system, especially any of the 7x00 or 8200/8500 machines that have fallen apart over the years, if you can find one. It should work just as well and being slightly newer, that era of CD drives usually does better with CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

Being Apple drives, they should boot find on most ~030s and newer using the "C" key or the SCSI ID key combo trick, which I always forget.

A whole bunch of Jaz and ZIP stuff. I've heard (from LGR, I think) that Jaz drives and disks were just awful.

Jaz is better than Zip, from an engineering and reliability standpoint, both are bad. Zip was worse and its problems impacted mroe people, because of capitalism reasons, essentially. I'd holdo nto it, if it all works they'll be useful. There's technologically better tools out there for what these do, but Zip and Jaz were sold in such huge quantities that it's easy to find stuff for them, or, perhaps, someone to buy them.

Zip is a little more cross-platform than Jaz. Zip was available in parallel, SCSI, IDE/ATAPI, USB, and Firewire interfaces (if I'm not forgetting one) across three capacity generations, which are widely at least a little compatible.

Day-to-day, networking is realistically a better choice for what to actually use (vtools!) but people swear by them for utility/boot disks (I've got one I set up to partition the SCSI2SD v6 with my 8600, even) and since there was a couple (around five to six) years where lots of Macs came with them built in, there's relatively good ecosystem support for them in that era.

The other thing Zip really has going for it is that it's well documented and all over the place. EZ-135 and other syquest formats, along with MO, are "better" (faster and/or much more durable overall) but limited availability makes syquest hard to find, limited information makes both (and bernoully moreso) difficult to use.