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Holy Moly SCSI->IDE 2.5 Adapter
- Thread starter aplmak
- Start date
I found this old thread. I have two of these cards but I have never been able to get them to work. PowerBooks from 100 to 180c, from 6.0.8 to 7.5. I tried also with a couple of versions of HTD. Are there some specific setting, for the 8 switches? Or the four pins on the IDE side?
techknight
Well-known member
in order to clone these things, someone would have to figure out a way to dump the logic out of the ispLSI1016 Lattice IC. Any thoughts on that?
Byrd
Well-known member
I've got two, and never got it working in a PowerBook 1x0 (a PowerBook 180c specifically) - any SCSI utility wouldn't find it. Another one in a PowerBook 540C works an absolute treat - with a cheap CF IDE adapter + 16GB Sandisk Extreme card. I'm yet to pull both adapters and double check the DIP switch settings.
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maceffects
Well-known member
It doesn't look like the kind that can easily be cracked so one would have to send it to one of those reverse engineering shops which typically charge $3000-$25,000 depending on complexity. I was hoping to do something similar for a 3.5 SCSI>IDE adapter, never made it past getting a $6,500 quote.
Byrd
Well-known member
Experiment with different Compact Flash cards too - for example, using < 512MB cards for a PowerBook 1x0.
I am trying to get it work with a bare 500 MB IDE pulled from a PB 190, similar age should be less problematic, or am I wrong and should use more recent IDE stuff?
Franklinstein
Well-known member
68k (and the NuBus PPC) PowerBooks maxed out at 1.5MB/s because of all of the legacy chips they used to reduce cost and maximize compatibility with the Duo System devices. However there were a number of machines that used 2.5" SCSI drives and also supported fast SCSI, such as portable computers from IBM and Tadpole, a few low-cost workstations from DEC, and some high-end digital audio samplers.
I've never seen an ATA-to-SCSI adapter board in a 5x0-series machine, though I did find one in a 1x0 series before (a 160 of some sort, I think). At the very least, IBM and Toshiba built 2.5" SCSI drives up to 1.2GB capacities, so it wasn't really required to use an adapter to get high-capacity drives in 1994 unless you were buying some tail-end refurbs 1996 and there was no stock of SCSI drives remaining, or a dealer had unsold inventory and upgraded them to try to get them sold. I'd suggest using IBM's 1.2GB DPRS drives (SCSI versions of the DPRA drives that shipped in the Duo 2300 and PB 5300) but I found out they don't have internal terminators so they don't work well in a PowerBook unless you have an external device (CDROM, MO, HD, Zip, etc) providing active termination. Really annoying.
I've never seen an ATA-to-SCSI adapter board in a 5x0-series machine, though I did find one in a 1x0 series before (a 160 of some sort, I think). At the very least, IBM and Toshiba built 2.5" SCSI drives up to 1.2GB capacities, so it wasn't really required to use an adapter to get high-capacity drives in 1994 unless you were buying some tail-end refurbs 1996 and there was no stock of SCSI drives remaining, or a dealer had unsold inventory and upgraded them to try to get them sold. I'd suggest using IBM's 1.2GB DPRS drives (SCSI versions of the DPRA drives that shipped in the Duo 2300 and PB 5300) but I found out they don't have internal terminators so they don't work well in a PowerBook unless you have an external device (CDROM, MO, HD, Zip, etc) providing active termination. Really annoying.
I have two of these adapters. When I installed one into my PB540c, it would only boot from from the ADTX adapter/drive with externally supplied termination power via an external SCSI device. My iterations of different dip switch settings did NOT yield success for me. I sincerely hope that you are successful and I overlooked the “correct settings.” I was considering looking to see if I could modify the adapter board to share +5v from the drive power line to provide the termination power internallly.
Thoughts?
anyone know.... on the one variation (gpbonneau pics he posted)
with RA1 through RA5 empty..... I believe that is for 1k resistors and without them, it cannot be terminated on its own in a powerbook 100x. I was going to try to solder some of the TINY smd 1k resistors on to prove the theory, but I am not so good with those TINY parts/soldering them. I already tried adding 5v for termination but it wont terminate so I suspect it needs the resistors. Only works if an external drive terminates the chain.
with RA1 through RA5 empty..... I believe that is for 1k resistors and without them, it cannot be terminated on its own in a powerbook 100x. I was going to try to solder some of the TINY smd 1k resistors on to prove the theory, but I am not so good with those TINY parts/soldering them. I already tried adding 5v for termination but it wont terminate so I suspect it needs the resistors. Only works if an external drive terminates the chain.
