Getting my macintosh plus to boot from a external hard drive

[didius]

Hi

I have a macintosh plus (4 Mb) and would like it to boot from an external hard drive.

I don't succeed however to do that. What am I doing wrong?

This is the setup:

(please note the battery is missing)

The back of my plus:

The back of the drive:

The drive:

(Have i terminated everything correctly?)

Look at this movie of the bootup first.

http://webs.hogent.be/~054169dv/mac/boot.mpg

As you can see, i boot up the drive first, and then i boot up my macintosh plus. However it keeps asking for a system disk.

So i insert a system disk.

Booting up gives me the following dekstop:

(note: the hard drive show up)

About Finder shows the following:

The contents of my hard drive:

(Note: the system folder is blessed)

The information dialog of my hard drive:

The contents of the system folder on my hard drive:

I get the following error when i try to open something on my floppy disk:

And when i try to open up finder on my hard drive:

I can switch to the finder on my hard drive by opening finder with opt+command

But when i try to open a file then i get the following:

Anyone knows what's the problem?

 

[MacJunky]

Well, seeing as how you can actually mount and access the data on the HD one would assume (from what I have experienced anyway) that your termination is ok.

Is it just me or is the label on that HD looking like it belongs on a PATA/ATA/IDE drive?

Also, I am completely unwilling to watch the startup video as I am stuck in an area with no faster wired connections than dialup.

Where did the OS in the HD come from? perhaps you should disable and archive the old existing one and install a new OS then test that?

 

[didius]

Well, seeing as how you can actually mount and access the data on the HD one would assume (from what I have experienced anyway) that your termination is ok.Is it just me or is the label on that HD looking like it belongs on a PATA/ATA/IDE drive?

Also, I am completely unwilling to watch the startup video as I am stuck in an area with no faster wired connections than dialup.

Where did the OS in the HD come from? perhaps you should disable and archive the old existing one and install a new OS then test that?

It is a IDE drive indeed, so says:

http://www.computerhope.com/hdquantu.htm#prodrive

I have formatted the drive and freshly installed system 6.0.8 on it.

 

[MacJunky]

.. Wait, what am I missing? How are you using an IDE drive with a Macintosh Plus that has SCSI?

 

[MacG4]

.. Wait, what am I missing? How are you using an IDE drive with a Macintosh Plus that has SCSI?

yeah.....

 

[equill]

Your SCSI-based Mac will not address an ATA drive unless you set up the ATA drive with a SCSI/ATA adapter. It was my belief that such adapters existed only for 2.5-in drives so that they might be used in PowerBooks—and even then they are scarce and pricey—when 2.5-in SCSI drives looked to be going out of production

We have to ask how you have managed to connect from a 50-pin internal ribbon cable (through Apple's economy 25-pin setup at the external port) to a 50-wire cable and (presumably) Centronics-style CN-50 peripheral connector to an essentially 40-pin HDD? One cannot refrain from supposing that an old Quantum LPS or Conner 3.5-in. external SCSI drive will give you fewer difficulties. That includes choices of enclosure, cabling and connectors.

de

 

[didius]

I'm not really an retro computing expert:

So:

Here are some extra pictures

 

[MacJunky]

http://webs.hogent.be/~054169dv/mac/unistor6.JPG <-- that looks like a 50pin SCSI drive.

 

[Unknown_K]

Looks like a SCSI HD to me. Are there a set of resisters underneath on the circuit board next to the 50 pin SCSI connection? Those older drives had resisters for termination so you don't need an external terminator (if they are still installed on the drive).

Find some old mac formatting programs like Micronet 7.x or Lido to format the drive.

 

[didius]

http://webs.hogent.be/~054169dv/mac/unistor6.JPG <-- that looks like a 50pin SCSI drive.

That's an Quantum ProDrive ELS

http://www.computerhope.com/hdquantu.htm#prodrive

says it is IDE.

Looks like a SCSI HD to me. Are there a set of resisters underneath on the circuit board next to the 50 pin SCSI connection? Those older drives had resisters for termination so you don't need an external terminator (if they are still installed on the drive).

I think there were resistors indeed, but they have been removed.

Find some old mac formatting programs like Micronet 7.x or Lido to format the drive.

:-/

And where would i be able to find that?...

 

[TylerEss]

Quantum ProDrives came in both IDE and SCSI flavors, and they look identical except for the controller boards. I have one of each on the junk shelf at my workbench. Lots of Macs shipped with ProDrives from about 40 to 260MB in the early 90s.

 

[MacMan]

That is a SCSI hard drive. The thing that gives it away is the Apple "40" sticker. This means it is 40MB capacity. The first Macs to use an IDE drive were the Quadra / Performa 630s and they had 250MB drives. Any 40MB Apple-branded drive will be SCSI.

The problem you're experiencing may be SCSI related. Try adjusting the number wheel on the back of the hard drive unit so that it reads "6". When the Plus scans for SCSI devices it starts at 7 and counts down, so it'll find a drive with ID 6 quickly. Also try booting it without the SCSI terminator.

 

[didius]

That is a SCSI hard drive. The thing that gives it away is the Apple "40" sticker. This means it is 40MB capacity. The first Macs to use an IDE drive were the Quadra / Performa 630s and they had 250MB drives. Any 40MB Apple-branded drive will be SCSI.
The problem you're experiencing may be SCSI related. Try adjusting the number wheel on the back of the hard drive unit so that it reads "6". When the Plus scans for SCSI devices it starts at 7 and counts down, so it'll find a drive with ID 6 quickly. Also try booting it without the SCSI terminator.

I adjusted the SCSI number to 6, but that didn't help.

Booting without the SCSI terminator shows no hard drive at all in the Finder.

 

[tomlee59]

You have (had) everything hooked up fine. The very fact that you can see the HD on your desktop, and access its contents, shows that you have terminations set right, etc. It also shows that the drive is basically ok. You can leave the ID at 6 (it shaves a couple of seconds off of boot time), or go back to your original value of 2. N'importe.

Here are some things to try:

1) Reinstall the system. It could be that you simply have a damaged system folder.

2) Reformat the drive. It could be that the system folder is damaged because you have a bad sector. Since it appears that you don't have too much on that drive at the moment, it doesn't seem like you'll be wiping out too much of value. I'd recommend doing this just as a matter of course in this case, prior to step 1).

3) Try power cycling the drive after it's already gotten up to speed. I've had problems with older drives that had developed slow startup due to incipient "stiction" or degraded bearing lubrication. The firmware on the controller expects things to happen within a certain time, and a slow spinup can cause boot failure, without preventing mounting. Once it's spun up (and all disk activity has ceased), power down long enough for the disk to slow its rotation considerably without stopping, and then power back up. Then, power the Mac off and back on and see what happens.

 

[didius]

I have already formatted it before, but that didn't help nor reinstalling mac os.

I'll try the power cylcing method tomorrow.

I just noticed the date:

Could this be the troublemaker?

And what about the missing battery?

 

[~tl]

The missing battery will cause the Plus to loose it's date/time, startup disk and various other settings when you unplug it. It can cause weird behaviour, plus it's a bit of a PITA, so I'd replace the battery. Other than that, I'd try a fresh format of the drive and a fresh System disk and see if that helps. You can get a clean copy of 6.0.8 here:

Disk 1

Disk 2

Download those, install them on the hard drive and try booting with just that connected (no floppy in the drive)... hopefully it should boot [] ]'>

 

[tomlee59]

One more thing to consider: When you reformat, be sure to use an interleave of 3:1. Most formatting tools default to 1:1. On the Plus, this can cause problems ranging from very slow performance, to boot failure (hmmm...sounds eerily familiar).

 

[Big Bird]

You're not going to be able to open much in the System Folder with a System 6 Mac. The control panels (Sound, Mouse, Startup Disk, etc.) are designed to be opened from within the Control Panels desk accessory. If you don't, you're going to get the error message you get in the images.

The label on that external drive is definitely one from an IDE drive, but it is obviously plugged in via SCSI. I suppose that you swapped the controller board from a SCSI drive into an IDE drive?

On a Mac Plus, any drive you use with it must be formatted with a 3:1 interleave ratio. If the drive was formatted and system software was loaded on any other Mac, it will be incompatible with the Plus. You need to use Apple HD SC Setup from a boot disk on the Plus to initialize the drive with the correct interleave ratio.

The battery is going to be mostly a cosmetic issue on the Plus. I agree that you need to perform a fresh install of the system software. Tom's seems to have forgotten that the Plus only has an 800K floppy drive. The 1.4 MB images he posted won't do you much good on the Plus. If you don't have a copy of the system software you want to install, post back and someone can get you a link.

It never hurts to try power cycling, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. The drive *sounds* like it's spinning up correctly and as expected, not to mention it's mounting on the desktop without any more intervention. It simply sounds like your problem is the drive is not bootable to me, and that's entirely a software/formatting issue.

 

[~tl]

Tom's seems to have forgotten that the Plus only has an 800K floppy drive. The 1.4 MB images he posted won't do you much good on the Plus. If you don't have a copy of the system software you want to install, post back and someone can get you a link.

Ooops [xx(] ]'>

Try these instead:

Disk 1

Disk 2

Disk 3

Disk 4

[)] ]'>