So my first attempt didn't work: Using what I read here and on other posts and youtube, I did the following:
Prep
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1. Extracted the Apple 40SC/Conner CP-3045 from the Mac Portable
2. Removed the logic board from the drive and removed the foam debris that was turning to powder. Quick wipe with some 91% iso alcohol and followed with some compressed air. Replaced it with a piece of cut cardstock.
3. De-gooed the outside of the drive, which had green goo along one side, by soaking it up with cotton swabs.
Attempt
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4. Connected the adapter recommended by
@dramirez above to the 34pin from the drive
5. Connected a new BlueSCSI desktop (from androda) to the 50pin side of the adapter. The BlueSCSI was previously updated to the latest firmware (
v2024.05.21) and configured to Initiator mode with the jumpers.
6. Connected the 4pin molex from the adapter via a male-to-male cable I made to a power supply from a Startech IDE-to-usb adapter I had laying around.
7. Powered on the power supply to the drive
8. Connected the USB port of the BlueSCSI to my laptop so I could monitor the serial console (and for power)
Results
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a. The drive initially started up and spun down a few times on its own. I power cycled it a few times, and then it spun up sounding fairly nice - I haven't listened to a old spinning hard drive carefully in a while, but it sounded "right" in that it had an initial click followed by some seeking, but unfortunately seemed to return to idle after that.
b. While that was happening, I watched the BlueSCSI serial output and saw that it was in initiator mode and scanning for SCSI devices over and over, but never found one.
c. Not feeling like there was much to lose, I powered things off and opened the drive to see what it looked like inside. There was some more green goo on one edge of the inside of the case, but luckily all the platter and mechanism looked flawless. I couldn't see any goo, rubber remnants, or magnet flakes anywhere, though I haven't yet tried taking the upper magnet off to look any closer.
d. I resassembled the drive and tried a few more jumper configs even though I didn't think they would do anything, and they didn't (power and backfeed and even term off)
Next steps
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* Although the drive seemed to spin up and seek correctly, and its power requirements aren't that high, I'm tempted to find another power supply and try that. I know the one I tried "works" since I recently used it with IDE drives, but given the suggestion above to use something more precise it seems like a good idea.
* I'll pick up a USB to TTL adapter and try seeing if there's anything interesting on the serial output of the drive using the info from SuperSVGA's post over on tinker different:
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads...ac-portable-hd-on-another-mac.2624/post-22962
* On the off chance that there's something about the adapter that's not right, I'll doublecheck the pinout and look at some of the other adapter and cable configs people have tried. I've so far been assuming that even though most people are doing this in the opposite direction (i.e. not Initiator mode, to simulate a hard drive) that everything is symmetrical and the diode on the adapter - that I think is going to term power - doesn't matter.
* If nothing else works I might try taking apart the magnet assembly inside the drive and tape over any decayed rubber.
* If anything in the serial output looks suspect, I might also try to find some donor drives to swap pcbs with. I have been keeping an eye on eBay but there isn't anything reasonably priced to experiment with (if anyone has any drives or boards they would be willing to part with, I'm interested!)