mac plus with weird harddive

[nahuelmarisi]

Hi,

I've just acquired a mac plus (nothing strange there) with an extremely strange external hardrive.

It's a paradise scsi 20 mb external hardrive. It has two connectors, a SCSI and a serial one (i guess it draws current from there). It also has a gigantic power supply, and it is quite noisy. Furthermore, you can't boot from it. Neither does the mac recognise it. The only way to mount it is by opening a program called the paradise mounter which basically mounts the hardrive. I can then set it up as startup disk but still I can't boot from it.

I don't know if anybody heard about it, but it seems like a rather odd external harddrive.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

actually I made a mistake, the harddrive does not connect to the SCSI port, it connects to the floppy port!! Just like an HD SC20.

I thought nobody else had made floppy drive hard drives. I wonder if it would work with a 128 or 512k ...

 

[Quadraman]

It was probably originally made for an early Mac. The floppy port was the only way to connect a hard drive pre- SCSI.

 

[tomlee59]

actually I made a mistake, the harddrive does not connect to the SCSI port, it connects to the floppy port!! Just like an HD SC20.

The HD20 and the HD SC20 are two different beasts. The SC stands for SCSI. It's the plain HD20 that connects to the floppy port. And yes, it will almost certainly work on a Plus when connected to its floppy port.

 

[Charlieman]

My notes on an early Paradise drive (taken from contemporary reports) are provided below. The one described by the OP sounds similar, but seems to use the floppy rather than serial port for data. The fact that it is not bootable on a Plus indicates that it does not support the Plus serial port for power o indication. A confimation that it actually uses the floppy port and a model description would be helpful so that I can update my notes.

Begins ** Paradise Mac-10

Paradise offered another variation on the serial external hard drive theme for 128 and 512K Macs. The drive has an external power supply designed to sit on the floor to save on desktop space. The drive monitors a 5V line on the serial port and switches on automatically when the Mac is powered up. It can be used on either serial port but the printer port is required if you wish to use the Paradise print spooler feature.

A volume manager utility is used to configure the Paradise drive for use with MFS. One Usenet correspondent reported that the Paradise software will work in conjunction with the Hard Disk 20 INIT to permit the use of HFS volumes. Later versions of the Paradise management software officially supported HFS whilst still using 64KB ROMs.

Note: the Paradise Mac-10 will not work fully with a Mac Plus or later because these models do not provide the 5V signal on the serial port. A serial port adapter such as that sold for the Thunderscan is required for the Plus. Also a 20MB model. ** Ends

 

[nahuelmarisi]

Hi,

The drive does connect to the floppy drive. It also has connects to the serial or printer port. However although I can mount it i am unable to boot from it (even when I connect to the serial port). Perhaps I'm missing an extension. I don't know. You say it supports the HD 20 init, should I use it ?

 

[Charlieman]

Thanks for the update and confirmation that it is a floppy port drive. It is a later drive than the one I know about, but very closely related.

Try: plug the serial connector into the Mac's printer port, plug floppy connector to floppy port, add power to disk drive whilst waiting twenty seconds, then power on Mac Plus. If that fails, repeat using modem serial port. If both fail, accept the fact that the drive is not bootable on a Plus. Adding an INIT to the System Folder isn't going to make a difference. An INIT only executes when the system unit boots from a System Folder on a drive, and your system unit isn't doing that. You don't need the HD20 INIT -- a Mac Plus already knows how to cope with HFS drives from its ROM code (128KB ROMs).

Nudge: model number and description on the case...

 

[MarNo84]

My notes on an early Paradise drive (taken from contemporary reports) are provided below. The one described by the OP sounds similar, but seems to use the floppy rather than serial port for data. The fact that it is not bootable on a Plus indicates that it does not support the Plus serial port for power o indication. A confimation that it actually uses the floppy port and a model description would be helpful so that I can update my notes.

Begins ** Paradise Mac-10

Paradise offered another variation on the serial external hard drive theme for 128 and 512K Macs. The drive has an external power supply designed to sit on the floor to save on desktop space. The drive monitors a 5V line on the serial port and switches on automatically when the Mac is powered up. It can be used on either serial port but the printer port is required if you wish to use the Paradise print spooler feature.

A volume manager utility is used to configure the Paradise drive for use with MFS. One Usenet correspondent reported that the Paradise software will work in conjunction with the Hard Disk 20 INIT to permit the use of HFS volumes. Later versions of the Paradise management software officially supported HFS whilst still using 64KB ROMs.

Note: the Paradise Mac-10 will not work fully with a Mac Plus or later because these models do not provide the 5V signal on the serial port. A serial port adapter such as that sold for the Thunderscan is required for the Plus. Also a 20MB model. ** Ends

OMG, I know, I know I shouldn't dig here in this "grave" ... but I have a nice Mac10 external Harddrive but I lost my serial cable during our moving we did in 2019 :/  You don't know the serial wiring from teh drive to the Macintosh 128k/512k? I couldn't find anything in the Internet so far  

Stay safe & healthy,

Marcus