CompactFlash in Quadra 605

[johnklos]

There has been much discussion about ways to get CompactFlash cards onto SCSI busses. Some machines can take a full height 3.5" drive or another option is putting something in place of a CD drive, so SCSI-IDE adapters like the ARS-2000FU (which mounts underneath an IDE drive and makes it full height) or the AEC-7720U (which mounts behind and can fit with the drive in the space of a CD drive) viable options. IDE to CF can then be added.

The Quadra 605 obviously has no space for either of these. One option (which I did for a few years) was to remove the floppy drive and run cables from the motherboard and the hard drive to an AEC-7720U which was in the space of the floppy as shown here:

http://www.mac68k.org/~john/boobookitty/

That hard drive died. I've had this machine since my friend gave it to me (and she bought it brand new) so it's outlasted many drives. So instead of replacing the IDE drive, I got a SCSI-SATA enclosure (the Acard ARS-2000SU) and installed a 250 gig laptop hard drive. Using less power and generating less heat is always good, plus I could keep it more original with the floppy still installed. Needless to say, after a few years that hard drive died, too. So I decided to go the CompactFlash route.

Using an expensive ARS-2000SU might seem like overkill for attaching a CompactFlash card, and the AEC-7720U is still an option with an Addonics CF-IDE adapter, but I really like how the ARS-2000SU fits so perfectly, so I got a SATA-CompactFlash adapter:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036DDXUW

and a CompactFlash-SD adapter:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016G8DBA

and a 64 gig SD card, but either the SD card or the adapter made that too slow, so I got a regular 16 gig CompactFlash card and it's been running quickly and smoothly ever since:

I already upgraded the VRAM from 512K to 1 meg and I may get a 64 gig card, so hopefully I can consider this machine finished for a good number of years.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

That's quite a MicroQuadraFeetsMac you've got there!

I just wish one of our technical boffins would do an IDE <-> SCSI bridge card to compete with A-Card's wildly expensive products.

It wouldn't even need to be very fast for use with Mac SCSI! :-/

 

[ClassicHasClass]

What's with the Intel Inside sticker?

I don't remember that one. Was it on your pkgsrc build "rack"?

 

[Byrd]

Nice upgrade, you've increased the value of that Mac by one hundred fold!

What's the card in the PDS slot?

JB

 

[johnklos]

What's with the Intel Inside sticker? I don't remember that one. Was it on your pkgsrc build "rack"?

It wasn't on my rack at the time, but it will be soon. After all, there are no m68k machines in my rack at home because both of my m68060s are in the datacenter rack.

The Intel Inside sticker (good eyes) was us being silly whenever it was that Pentium II (we called them Nintendo cartridge processors) was new.

Nice upgrade, you've increased the value of that Mac by one hundred fold! What's the card in the PDS slot?

Well, value is measured different ways by different people. I'd say that it has a certain value while it's running reliably which is higher than when it's not running, so yes, I've increased its value, but it always had a lot of sentimental value.

The card is a Farallon EtherWave LC which has two 10baseT ports set up as a hub. Someone was selling it on eBay as a dual ethernet card, which I knew it wasn't, but I thought it'd be cool to have a pass-through.

Another thought is that I have a 64 gig SSD coming back from warranty replacement, so I might put that in. We'll see. For now, it'll be compiling NetBSD pkgsrc along with one of my m68060s.