Hi ! medium-sized headache induced

[cylindricpanda]

I recently acquired a 7100/80 with a bad HD and a Performa 636CD for some nostalgia times and also because I'm a minor collector of vintage comps, I've also got a PB G3 Lombard and a clamshell iBook that I thought was dead but just had a bad battery (surprise surprise) Even further back I got a G3 all-in-one that unfortunately I was able to use all of twice before the screen started going wonky.

Now for the actual questions; the HD in the AIO still works fine, and after reading up on everymac.com and the mactracker app, I thought since they were both SCSI I could just put that drive in the 7100 and be cruisy, but alas, the drive is 50-pin and the 7100 is 68-pin (or it might be the other way around, it's been a minute since I looked at them) or the drive might be IDE, it's actually slightly vague to me. I would like to get solid state drives in both the 7100 and the 636, since they are both old enough to drink by now ( hell I guess the lombard is too for that matter) is there a IDE/SCSI to CF/SD yall recommend? I've seen the SCSI2SD, that would probably work for the powerbook (except would it? I just had another peek on everymac and it says the lombard uses eide/ata-2 so I'm not sure...)

Lastly, I'd like to be able to share files between the 7100 the 636 and the powerbook. they all have CD drives and while that would be the simplest, I would like to network them in some way. I know the 7100 uses AAUI so I'd need an adaptor, the 636 has...nothing built-in so I'd need to track down some sort of card to add networking...but since they use SCSI, would it be worth it to track down like an external zip100/250 drive? I do also have a macbook pro from 2007 so probably whatever software would first be downloaded there then put on another media..

sorry for the wall of text,

 

[beachycove]

The 7100 has a 50 pin scsi drive. There are adapters for more modern spinning SCSI drives, including Nubus to 68-pin or simple plug in adapters, or you can indeed go SCSI2SD. 1 GB is likely plenty.

The 636 has some sort of early IDE drive specification, but again doesn't really need the capacities available in the later ATA drives (80GB or whatever), nor the capacities of solid state for that matter. I think I'd pop in a Compact Flash adapter and a 1 or 2 GB CF card if I really, really wanted a solid state conversion in this machine.

Neither are going to give you much by way of speed improvements, no matter how fast the drive you install, because of the limitations of the system. It would be like connecting an electricity transmission grid to a battery.

The Lombard has standard IDE, and if you do an eBAY search, you'll likely find ~20GB spinners NEW for a pittance from China, with free shipping or as good as. If you really want solid state, then alas, proper IDE solid state drives are expensive. There are converters that allow use of cheaper and cheerfuller SATA drives on an IDE bus, but the space available in the drive bay of a Lombard is very limited. I'd go for a spinner.

 

[Daniël]

The Lombard has standard IDE, and if you do an eBAY search, you'll likely find ~20GB spinners NEW for a pittance from China, with free shipping or as good as. If you really want solid state, then alas, proper IDE solid state drives are expensive. There are converters that allow use of cheaper and cheerfuller SATA drives on an IDE bus, but the space available in the drive bay of a Lombard is very limited. I'd go for a spinner.

There's smaller SSDs that can be adapted to IDE, though. mSATA used to be a popular option for converting to IDE, and Chinese companies made 2.5" sized converters that would fit in place of a spinner that would take one of those mSATA SSDs. mSATA's gone the way of the dodo in favour of M.2, which can either use the SATA protocol, or connect to a computer's PCI Express bus. The SATA variants can be adapted to IDE in similar fashion, such as seen here: https://www.finnie.org/2017/08/05/m2-sata-ssds-on-mac-mini-g4s/

I wouldn't bother with IDE hard drives anymore, at least not buying ones online. Those out of China are not verified to be NOS, they could have been well used or even trashed by previous usage. And even NOS, moving components can age worse if unused. There's just no telling how long it'll last, and IDE hard drives haven't been made in a long time, meaning all of them are in various stages of aging. You might as well go SSD to both for future proofing, and a small but noticeable performance boost in most typical workloads. Unless you really, really just want the "authentic" experience.

 

[cheesestraws]

Lastly, I'd like to be able to share files between the 7100 the 636 and the powerbook. they all have CD drives and while that would be the simplest, I would like to network them in some way. I know the 7100 uses AAUI so I'd need an adaptor, the 636 has...nothing built-in so I'd need to track down some sort of card to add networking

All Macs, from the very beginning, have built-in (albeit slow) networking, called LocalTalk, which works via the printer port (or the single serial port on PowerBooks).  You can link two Macs just using a standard Apple printer cable (with an 8-pin mini-DIN at each end).  To link all three or more macs at once, you need some adapter boxes, which make sure the bus works properly.  Any Mac running 7.1+ can act as a file server using the "Sharing Setup" or "File Sharing" control panels (what it's called depends on the version of the OS).  If you want to get really fancy you can bridge LocalTalk to Ethernet on the 7100, but that's starting to get into more involved territory, and may not be what you need.

LocalTalk is brilliant (though slow) and you should try it out here

 

[Michael_b]

For the SCSI drive, probably easiest to get an SCA drive as described in this thread. There are alternatives, like RaSCSI, or SCSI2SD, but a real SCSI drive should be less troublesome in terms of setup.

I generally agree that IDE drives are trouble compared to the alternatives that now exist. It's possible to purchase an mSATA to IDE adapter that is a drop in replacement for a 2.5" IDE hard drive for $8.75 - you just need to add an mSATA SSD. There are 16GB mSATA SSDs available from $9. While this route is a bit more expensive than buying a used IDE 2.5" drive, you'll end up with something faster, quieter, and more reliable. The CF to IDE route is also worth considering, especially for an older, less performant machine.

 

[cylindricpanda]

All Macs, from the very beginning, have built-in (albeit slow) networking, called LocalTalk, which works via the printer port (or the single serial port on PowerBooks).  You can link two Macs just using a standard Apple printer cable (with an 8-pin mini-DIN at each end).  To link all three or more macs at once, you need some adapter boxes, which make sure the bus works properly.  Any Mac running 7.1+ can act as a file server using the "Sharing Setup" or "File Sharing" control panels (what it's called depends on the version of the OS).  If you want to get really fancy you can bridge LocalTalk to Ethernet on the 7100, but that's starting to get into more involved territory, and may not be what you need.

LocalTalk is brilliant (though slow) and you should try it out here

Ah I forgot about localtalk, that would probably work for what I'd need.

as for the platter drives vs solid state, I'm mostly looking for reliability more than anything, I wouldn't want to turn any of them off for a month or two and find out later that the drive was dead and I lost all that data/time.

 

[cheesestraws]

Ah I forgot about localtalk, that would probably work for what I'd need.

I'd try it to see if it does what you need before you spend money on an Ethernet card, certainly .  Much cheaper and easier.

 

[cylindricpanda]

Is there a clear advantage to using SD vs CF vs mSATA drives anymore? I've heard previously that sd cards are less reliable for long term use than cf but maybe with advances in flash storage it's more or less the same these days.

 

[Daniël]

Is there a clear advantage to using SD vs CF vs mSATA drives anymore? I've heard previously that sd cards are less reliable for long term use than cf but maybe with advances in flash storage it's more or less the same these days.

SD cards really aren't meant for boot disks. Sustained writes is where they really struggle, and they're not as reliable in the long term as a real SSD like an mSATA or M.2 SATA SSD. CFs are generally better than SDs, but much more expensive per GB as compared to SATA SSDs, while not being as fast as them. So going SATA SSD through an IDE converter, either mSATA or M.2 SATA, would be the best all-round option IMO. 

 

[cylindricpanda]

so for my lombard I've got this ssd and this enclosure in my cart but before I pull the trigger, is there anything special I need to watch out for as far as formatting tools before I pop it in? I've got os9 cds handy and that's what it's got now so I'll probably keep using that. It's just I've heard stories of having to use special versions of like drive setup/disk first aid (but that might've been on se30s.

also, the lombard has a PCMCIA slot, wouldn't a compactflash adapter work for some removable storage? I would think as long as the CF card was speedy enough and maybe not too big it should just see it like any other drive.