Fitting a SCSI2SD in a 68k Mac

[tanaquil]

My whole purpose to use SCSI2SD is to use between early 68k macs to PowerPC with SCSI. So if you have more than 1 Mac - then get v6.

I am in the market for a SCSI2SD as well. I was just looking at the site last night and noticed a warning that the v6 may not always work well with the DB25 connector (i.e. when used as an external drive with SCSI1 macs like the LCII). I was leaning toward going for v5 for that reason, since I also want to use it as a bridge to move between macs. I do have many more pre-PPC macs than PPC macs though.

Has anyone had trouble with the v6 used as external drive with pre-PPC macs?

 

[Skate323k137]

I haven't tried using the v6 as an external, as the V5 has worked fine for me and I don't care too much about the speed, given the slow external bus speed of my 7500s. For external use I'd probably stay with a v5 unless a little extra speed really matters. I've moved many files between my SE and 7500 with an external v5. The v6 can run into power issues on termination power alone, or so I'm told. 

 

[AlpineRaven]

Now this is the first...

As I have external SCSI2SD for installs etc to go between macs to macs (its an image of 128gb of software and system installs etc, as standard format running system 7.6.1 and covers 68k and PPC).

This listed Macs/Powerbooks that SCSI2SD v5 is working on;

PowerBook 160

PowerBook 3400
PowerBook G3 PDQ

PowerBook G3 Lombard

Mac LC2

LC475

Quadra 700

Quadra 840av

Macintosh IIci

Macintosh IIsi

Quadra 660av

WGS 6150

PowerMac G4 MDD (Via SCSI Card)

NOW.... PowerBook 1400 - fails to pick up SCSI2SD - not even one blink or anything... that is the first for me, have I missed something? Or something in the settings that I might've missed? Just that I would like to install some stuff on PB1400 as no CD ROM is working.
Cheers

AP

 

[tanaquil]

I just was rereading this thread and saw that you have a 128gb drive working (at first I thought you must mean 128mb). How exactly are you using that with System 7 era macs? I thought 2GB was the limit for HFS Standard. But I just recently got my SCSI2SD and am still learning. You mentioned a 700 MB HD in your earlier comment, but do you have to use the card in an HFS+ Mac first to move stuff to the 700mb drive for transport? 

(Most of the time 2GB is fine for macs of that era but I wanted to organize content from a bunch of early CD ROMs and those CD-ROM megabytes add up fast.)

re: the PB 1400, do you have another known good SCSI device you can test it with? 

Alternately, have you tried applying external power?

 

[AlpineRaven]

I just was rereading this thread and saw that you have a 128gb drive working (at first I thought you must mean 128mb). How exactly are you using that with System 7 era macs? I thought 2GB was the limit for HFS Standard. But I just recently got my SCSI2SD and am still learning. You mentioned a 700 MB HD in your earlier comment, but do you have to use the card in an HFS+ Mac first to move stuff to the 700mb drive for transport? 

(Most of the time 2GB is fine for macs of that era but I wanted to organize content from a bunch of early CD ROMs and those CD-ROM megabytes add up fast.)

re: the PB 1400, do you have another known good SCSI device you can test it with? 

Alternately, have you tried applying external power?

You are correct, if its under 7.6.1, it is (2gb is 7.1) and 7.5.5 is 4gb limit. If you're in 7.6.1 you can have more than 4gb/less than 128gb. On my PowerBook G3 Pismo is limited to 128gb, you have to format it externally to partition it to get bigger than 128gb (PBG3 has 256gb partitioned into 128gb each)

I actually forgotten about the power from bus/powered externally - Will give that a go later today, SCSI2SD never came out from its enclosure since I got it.

Cheers

AP

 

[EvieSigma]

I decided to try using the 7.5.3 version linked in this thread to update the OS on my Color Classic with a SCSI2SD but it can't open any of the files? I just get a "the document *insert file name here* could not be opened, because the application program that created could not be found" error.

 

[Realitystorm]

I decided to try using the 7.5.3 version linked in this thread to update the OS on my Color Classic with a SCSI2SD but it can't open any of the files? I just get a "the document *insert file name here* could not be opened, because the application program that created could not be found" error.

I have updated links and a walk through of how to install 7.5.5 using the files found on the internet archive.  http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/09/02/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-installing-the-full-version-of-system-7-5-5-or-6-0-8/

 

[EvieSigma]

I ended up figuring it out myself, but thank you very much regardless!

 

[Joris W]

Could anyone clarify if a SCSI2SD v6 will work with a Mac Plus, or am I better off getting a v5 ?

 

[LaPorta]

To my knowledge, the V5 works better with early generation (I.e. Mac Plus) hardware.

 

[Realitystorm]

I've been doing a lot of experimentation as part of setting up pre-configured image files (initialized, partitioned, and minimal system files) that can be written to SD cards.   http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/01/05/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-using-a-scsi2sd-adapter/

One issue I've found is the labeled size of the cards vs. the actual capacity isn't consistent.   E.g. I have two 4GB cards, one that has a capacity of 4,024,434,688 bytes, and another that has a capacity of 3,965,186,048 bytes.    I'm not sure if the SCSI2SD Util will prevent you from setting the size of your "drive" to be larger than the size of your SD card, so I'm being a bit more careful with the SCSI2SD card configurations and I'm explicitly setting the size of each drive using the sector size and count vs. simply entering the device size.

 

[LazarusNine]

I have an early version SCSI2SD sitting in an LCIII virtually unused. I’m also contemplating version 5.1 or 6. For some reason, I’ve JUST come across the now obvious idea of using SCSI2SD as an external device after seeing this listing on eBay. Having one device where I could swap in different SD cards based on the machine I was using at the time would be excellent.

Does anyone have any advice about ‘official’ implementations of an external SCSI2SD setup or some good DIY guidelines to convert an internal SCSI2SD to include the external connector?

Additionally, if I want to be able to use this external ‘drive’ between Macs from the IIx and SE/30 all the way through to, say, the LC475 and 7100, which version of SCSI2SD should I use - 5.1 or 6? I like the bells and whistles of v6 and the idea that it may receive longer support, but perhaps compatibility is an issue? The CODESRC site seems to suggest that v6 is compatible with the LC475 and Mac Classic, but I don’t know if that extends as far back as the IIx. Thanks!

 

[CC_333]

I don't know much about these, but maybe I know enough to answer your question:

Both the 5.1 and 6.0 SCSI2SDs should be compatible with all your machines, but the 6.0 has enhancements and optimizations that help it perform faster on Macs with faster SCSI subsystems. In most other Macs however, that extra speed will be wasted, so you might as well go with the 5.1 unless you plan to use it in a Quadra or IIfx (or some such) someday.

I hope this helps!

c

 

[Alex]

Thank you for the post, appreciations deserved!

 

[gumby1999]

Hi 

I can't seem to get  the firmware or scsi2sd-util to launch. I've followed what little instruction provided from the main website as well as scanning through the forums. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong any help would be great.

Thanks 

SCS!2SD Ver 5.1

Mac PB 2009 OSX 10.6

Mac PM 8500/7300

 

[LaPorta]

Are you sure the util is compatible with OSX as old as 10.6?

 

[gumby1999]

Hi I also have a Macbook air OX10.13.6 and still no luck

 

[MOS8_030]

What exactly happens when you try to launch the utility?

 

[gumby1999]

Hi download scsi2sd util again on my macbook air os10.13 and terminal finally launched scsi2sd util. 

I have no idea why it didn’t work a few times before.  Thanks again

 

[walterg74]

Hi all,

I’ve recently purchased one of these, a v5.1, to use with an LC III. 

I am using a 16GB card, and with the utility setup 4 x 2GB drives (stupidly thinking I was setting up partitions and not drives...). 

Anywho, I am using a Floppy Emu device and the thing is I boot a disk tools image with a patched utility and the disk(s) are seen, I can initialize and update. 

However, when I try to install the OS (doing 7.5.3) it will start copying files up to a point (some times disk 4, sometimes disk 2, my last attempt got to disk 8 ) where it will say “an error occurred while trying to complete the installation. Installation was canceled, leaving your disk untouched”. 

And that’s about it, seems to roll back everything. 

What could be the problem?