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Best SCSI disks to use on Quadra 900?

chillin

Well-known member
SCSI -> SATA seems like an unnecessary step when SCSI adapters are available.
Disregard people who want you to do complicated things. It is very rarely, pragmatically speaking, worth it. SCSI to SATA is a very expensive way to have exactly the same experience as you would with cheaper options.

I'm really at a loss to understand how 10MB/s is just as good as 20MB/s, and that $100 for a SATA adapter and SSD is too expensive, but the same spent on SCSI2SD or SCSI adapter + Ultra-wide SCSI HDD is a smart spend. Granted, the Apple cache+SCSI PDS card is very difficult to find and likely expensive, but it is grail-worthy, and I highly doubt anyone who's ever posted here with a Q900, Q950 or WGS95 would not deeply consider the expensive purchase and have all sorts of desire for it, if available. Consider that if I spent twice as much for 20MB/s as you did for 10MB/s, we paid the same in $/MB/s. But it is too complicated for mortals, so do not consider it, and dismiss all dissent! Seriously? It isn't splitting the atom, folks, it's a SCSI card, a couple of SCSI adapters and an SSD, and the appetite to make it hunt for the glory of twice the performance.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
highly doubt anyone who's ever posted here with a Q900, Q950 or WGS95 would not deeply consider the expensive purchase and have all sorts of desire for it, if available

Um, I have two 950s, and multiple SCSI cards, and I tell you now, they have made not a whit of real-world difference to me in my use of the system aside from giving me more IDs. This includes the r@r3 one that sits in the PDS slot and goes like greased lightning (no, not the WGS card). You can talk about cost per megabit per second all you like, and you can stand on your soapbox all you like. Stop assuming that everyone wants the same as you, and stop assuming that obssessively upgrading all the things is necessarily a good use of money or time.
 

joshc

Well-known member
I'm really at a loss to understand how 10MB/s is just as good as 20MB/s
Because we're talking about a Q900 presumably running System 7 and that is also presumably not a daily driver. Speed is not everything, afterall we're talking a machine that's decades old at this point.

The OP specifically stated they don't want to import stuff and can't afford that, so how does suggesting they buy expensive cards/adapters help?

and I highly doubt anyone who's ever posted here with a Q900, Q950 or WGS95 would not deeply consider the expensive purchase
That is a big assumption to make. I own a Q950 and have no intention of expensive storage solutions for it.

It isn't splitting the atom, folks, it's a SCSI card, a couple of SCSI adapters and an SSD, and the appetite to make it hunt for the glory of twice the performance.
So where are these SCSI cards you speak of, and how much do they cost and why are they necessary, apart from supposed speed improvement? And what does that mean in real usage terms? System 7 and most apps boot/open quick enough even from a BlueSCSI on an 040.
 

chillin

Well-known member
@cheesestraws
Well first of all, you have not volunteered what drives you're running, and that makes all the difference in the world. And, again, I never said anything like "you should do this! You just have to do this! This is the only thing that can be done!" I answered the question of what was best possible, and did so accurately, and I have defended my position. I'm also attempting to understand the "don't try that, can't be done, dismiss all who dissent" attitude, when, as far as we're aware, it's never been attempted. I also fundamentally disagree that doubling performance is a waste of money and time, and my position is backed up by a lot of interesting activity on this site over the decades, but I stop short of ever telling anyone else what to do.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
I'm using
I highly doubt anyone who's ever posted here with a Q900, Q950 or WGS95 would not deeply consider the expensive purchase and have all sorts of desire for it, if available

I never said anything like "you should do this! You just have to do this! This is the only thing that can be done!"

These statements do not go together on a fairly basic linguistic level.

I answered the question of what was best possible

You did not, however, answer the question the OP asked, which is, implicitly, "what is the best I can reasonably get", and now the thread has derailed to the point of uselessness.
 

chillin

Well-known member
That's not what he asked. Look, it really is ok to disagree. It is only through dissent that technology has ever moved forward. If everyone always agreed with you, nothing would ever advance.
 

chillin

Well-known member
Forget the "expensive" SCSI2SATA adapter. Have you gents tried a SCSI SSD drive with your fast wide SCSI card?
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
Everybody has their favorite solutions. I prefer spinning rust of high end SCSI cards mostly because that is what I have collected over the years and they seem to work fine. Sofware people want easier more modern solutions to make setting up the hardware quick while hardware guys like the Nubus/PDS cards and then there are people in between.

Since I like collecting hardware especially Nubus cards I have quite a few of the FWB Jackhammers, SEII, SEIV, and some other oddballs and they are all faster than the built in SCSI on quadra era machines or older. The Silicon Express IV is not a card you want to boot from but works great with multiple drives in a software raid.

I never seen the need for SSD on an old 68k since you would not notice much difference from what I use (but you would compared to a stock drive on the stock SCSI bus).

Nobody uses this gear for real work anyway but exotic hardware does speed up the experience just like it did back in the day or nobody would have bothered to make them.
 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
Easiest and most available option is probably an SCA drive with an SCA-to-50-pin adapter and a passive terminator for the end of the cable. Bonus: the SCA drives are enterprise-rated and so are faster and more robust than their average desktop SCSI counterpart (which are already better than similarly aged ATA drives).

According to some of the listings on eBay, most of those SCSI-SATA adapters are specifically meant for CDROMs or other removable drives, so if you're going to buy one, you may want to double-check that they'll work with hard drives.

Most Macs will use very big SCSI drives but they can have problems in some cases. I'd probably keep well under 100GB, partially because pre-OS 8.1 Macs can't use HFS+ at all and no 68k Macs can boot from HFS+ regardless of the OS they're running, so you'd have to do a lot of partitioning to properly manage a big disk. I personally prefer keeping well under 10GB on 68k when possible just because HFS is so inefficient on large volumes (and I really don't have that much 68k stuff to fill that much space anyway).

If I were going to recommend drives of the era, I'd probably suggest Seagate or IBM because in my experience they tend to have the best performance and longevity, though after 30 years or so even the best of these drives are probably pretty tired. For newer SCA drives, Fujitsu, Seagate, Quantum, and IBM/Hitachi are all pretty good choices. If any of the Seagates you find are made in China I'd probably skip those though since that facility doesn't turn out product to the same level of quality as their Singapore or Thailand factories.
 
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