• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Holy Moly SCSI->IDE 2.5 Adapter

aplmak

Well-known member
So... I open up a 540c I had laying around for parts... 1st off it had a PCMCIA module.. Score 1... Not sure what version... So I was going to swipe the hard drive from it for another machine... and I look at it and it is an ATA drive??? I'm like wait... an IDE drive in a PB540c.... nahhhh....

There's an adapter daughter card on it!!! It's an IDE->SCSI 2.5 bridge board!!!!!!!! Crazy... never seen one of these!!!!

Anyone else seen em???

IMG_2765.JPG

Says Copyright ADTX on it...

 
Last edited by a moderator:

unity

Well-known member
Im not a huge PB collector, but I cant recall seeing any mention of this. Certainly opens up possibilities.

 

beachycove

Well-known member
They shipped with these occasionally, I think when drives ordered were larger than the scsi drives available at the time.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Someone who experimented with these in the past found they will take up to a 4GB IDE drive without burping.  And, of course, with the right adapter, you have the option of using a CF card.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

aplmak

Well-known member
Wouldn't work with a 4GB CF card... but worked fine with a 2GB... I even tried to partition the 4GB into 2 drives... still no go... it just didn't like 4GB even if I left the rest as free space.. But now running great with a 2GB CF

 

techknight

Well-known member
See if a modern utility will do an align=1024 on the existing formatted partition. Otherwise youll get random corruption issues. Trust me. Ive never had much luck with CF, so i started using IBM Microdrive CF cards which are physical HDDs, and they work perfect without failure. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:

dibenga

Well-known member
I'm pretty sure I've got one of those kicking around in my parts. I've yet to find use for it. I remember picking it up on eBay for a 180c I wanted to max out.

 

aplmak

Well-known member
Hang onto it... I re-purposed mine with a cheap ide to cf adapter board and now have it installed on a Powerbook with a flash card... runs great!

 

OleLila

Well-known member
After finding a couple of IDE to SCSI  bridges, I had to go to way back machine to find information so I am reposting it at the end.

I can confirm the last three dip switches do set the scsi drive number with either bridge. On the ide to SCSI bridge from a Power Book duo (pictured with the Lattice chip above the switches/kaplan tape)the adapter works with the apple labeled IDE drive and other (tested IBM and Fujitsu less than 2 gb) drives.

The other pictured bridge (without the lattice chip above the dip switches), even set with dip switches 3 and 4 on (or off for that matter), does not terminate in a powerbook 160....as soon as I plug in an external terminated Zip drive, only then does boot from the internal drive continue.

The setting of the first 3 dip switches does not alter the function, as far as I can detect, of a functioning boot up IDE drive plugged into the bridge. (I am talking left to right in the photos...watch out, because after looking at the photos, I can read the dip switch numbers)

REPOST:

There are two known versions for the board (chips listed left to right topdown):





  • symbios logic 53CF96-2 (narrow SCSI HBA);
  • a pair of Toshiba TC558128AJ-15 (15ns 128Kx8 CMOS static RAM);
  • a pair of ALS245A (buffers);
  • Lattice pLSI1016 (PLCC);
  • LSI KL5C80A16CF (Z80 instruction compatible microcontroller);
  • Atmel AT27C256R-70RC (70ns 32Kx8 CMOS EPROM).





  • symbios logic 53CF96-2 (narrow SCSI HBA);
  • a pair of SEC KM681001BJ-15 (15ns 128Kx8 CMOS static RAM);
  • a pair of ALS245A (buffers);
  • LSI KL5C80A16CF (Z80 instruction compatible microcontroller);
  • Atmel AT27C256R-70RC (70ns 32Kx8 CMOS EPROM);
  • Lattice pLSI1016 (PLCC).





The DIP switches

Left to right:


0



dunno



1



dunno



2



dunno



3



SCSI bus termination



4



SCSI bus termination



5



SCSI target bit 2



6



SCSI target bit 1



7



SCSI target bit 0




IDE drive geometry

as far as i can tell the board only understands drives with maximum of 15 heads and 63 sectors per track. the cylinder number is limited to 16384. the controller does not honour the total number of sectors on the drive that limits the total capacity to a little bit less than 8G.

drives with more than 15 heads seem to allow the device to probe but fail to accomplish any actual data transfers resulting in controller timeouts. that sounds like an overflow and thus division by zero on the board's controller (;

LAtice Bridge.jpg

NoLatice.jpg

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Jinnai

Well-known member
Wow, I'm glad this was once made, I never knew. I'd like a SCSI to IDE adapter, but that's because I like the sound of a spinning hard drive rather than an SD card.

 

maceffects

Well-known member
I had a SCSI to IDE adapter I once found in a PowerBook 100 series of all things.  Wish someone would reproduce these. 

 

Paralel

Well-known member
Apple actually implemented some SCSI to IDE converters themselves in the very early days of their permanent switch over to 2.5" IDE drives for their laptops. They have been found by some members here in certain machines. I'm sure there are threads about them.

If I remember correctly some of those period devices are known for having issues, but it's uncommon.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
IIRC one specific model of the high end Blackbirds in one particular configuration used SCSI adapted IBM IDE drives due to lack of availability of a suitable SCSI Drive. I was once planning to watch for that model and snag it. But lack of love for, if not outright aversion to the Blackbird's appearance pushed that thought right off the griddle of my mind and down the grease drain.

 

ScutBoy

Well-known member
The only couple I've found came out of 5xx series machines, but I've heard of someone who found one in a Duo. That seems unlikely to me due to the space available in the Duo body, but it's been a while since I've had one of those open and could be wrong.

 

gpbonneau

Well-known member
I have one (the second version) in a 540c (updated with a PPC 603ev/133).

I tried to replace the IDE hard drive (3.25Go IBM Travelstar) by a CF with an adapter, but without success...

On top : ATDX card + IBM Travelstar, and just below the original drive :

IMG_4842.JPG

The ATDX card :

IMG_4864 copie.JPG

IMG_4863 copie.JPG

 
Last edited by a moderator:

trag

Well-known member
I wonder why they used the 53CF96 instead of the 53C96.    The CF adds Fast SCSI (10 MB/s) as opposed to plain SCSI (5 MB/s), but as far as I know the PowerBooks never offered anythign faster than plain SCSI (5MB/s).    Of course, it might be a parts availability/cost thing at the time.  Perhaps the 53C96 was end of life and the 53CF96 was still available.

I have a brick of 500+ 53C96 on hand....   The 53CF96 is difficult to find and usually expensive when found.

 
Top