This flew by my radar a couple weeks ago, and then @Trash80toHP_Mini mentioned it in the eBay finds thread. Nobody else has created a dedicated thread about it yet, so, here we are.
I don't have one, I don't know who built it or if they're even here, but I'd love to try one out, I just don't have the money to do it, so if you've got one, I'd love to hear more about what it's like and why you picked it!
That starts here:
then, more here, and on the next page:
The MacSD is a new storage replacement tool for vintage Macs, featuring CD-ROM emulation and CD audio in/out. It stores disk and CDROM images as files on an SD card, itself formatted as FAT32, and the configuration is a plain text file.
THe main selling point seems to be the simple configuration.
More info at MacSD
This was originally my reply:
Me receiving a bunch of notifications like "uh oh".
In terms of what this thing is targeting: Straight-up the answer is that it's targeting people who come to sixty eight kay M L A dot org and say that they are having trouble configuring the SCSI2SD.
This thing has all appearances of being intentionally as simple as possible, which is why it uses image files on a FAT32 filesystem, a configuration file you can edit with a text editor, and physical switches to control certain other aspects.
The goal of this device is to be your only SCSI device.
The trade-offs are this:
If I had to guess, under the hood, the MacSD is simulating apple-branded hard disks, which would make it unsuitable to industrial and music gear that's looking for other specific things. (the SCSI2SD is thusly configurable,
The most recent overall comparisons we've got in performance of some different options were provided by @Fizzbinn here:
At the moment, none of these options is as fast as the potential a high end or modern disk can be. e.g. except in seek times Fizzbin's Savvio probably should top the charts, as a disk from probably 2005 or so. My experience with the SCSI2SD v6 has been that it's fast enough and generally feels sprightly in use on the PowerMac 8600, although the 8600 specifically is new enough that there's other options like PCI SCSI/IDE/SATA cards, so my take generally is that the scsi2sd v6 should be reserved for x100 PowerMacs and that most 68k Macs are probably well-enough served by the v5.
There's also the rascsi, which I haven't tracked closely. When it first came into being, it cost more than a scsi2sd v5 to build and was slower. It's my understanding that it has sped up a lot, perhaps with the pi4, but the disclaimer still applies that I don't have the latest on it. It's less "appliancized" than any of the other options, but, in that as pi speed boosts it could have the potential for the greatest performance.
General note as always for any of the SD-based solutions is that they generally want the best SD card you can get and benefit from buying further upscale.
I don't have one, I don't know who built it or if they're even here, but I'd love to try one out, I just don't have the money to do it, so if you've got one, I'd love to hear more about what it's like and why you picked it!
That starts here:
then, more here, and on the next page:
The MacSD is a new storage replacement tool for vintage Macs, featuring CD-ROM emulation and CD audio in/out. It stores disk and CDROM images as files on an SD card, itself formatted as FAT32, and the configuration is a plain text file.
THe main selling point seems to be the simple configuration.
More info at MacSD
This was originally my reply:
Me receiving a bunch of notifications like "uh oh".
w/re a new thread: "eeehhhh" (making it)I'm thinking they're aiming it at the non-Mac market SCSI2SD enjoys, Keyboards and other music related equipment? That might lend itself to CD-Changerish stuff?
In terms of what this thing is targeting: Straight-up the answer is that it's targeting people who come to sixty eight kay M L A dot org and say that they are having trouble configuring the SCSI2SD.
This thing has all appearances of being intentionally as simple as possible, which is why it uses image files on a FAT32 filesystem, a configuration file you can edit with a text editor, and physical switches to control certain other aspects.
The goal of this device is to be your only SCSI device.
The trade-offs are this:
- Costs more than the SCSI2SD v5 and v6 (this price will never come down as far as the scsi2sd v5 has, because it has very little viable market outside of the Mac)
- Slower than v6
- Only 4GB volumes supported, regardless of the Mac you put it in (for ex. if you put a scsi2sd v6 in a PPC Mac it should hypothetically support 2TB volumes, my v6 has a 30GB volume in my 8600, whether that's important to you will of course depend on context -- 040s generally support 4GB+ volumes with 7.6 and newer, 030s are normally limited to 4 unless something else has come up (or some third party software has like a boot + driver + data arrangement)
- better CDROM + audio support (better for multimedia/game cdrom consumption, make it easier to, say, do a CDROM-based install of the OS without having any other devices)
- MacSD is easier to configure than SCSI2SD
If I had to guess, under the hood, the MacSD is simulating apple-branded hard disks, which would make it unsuitable to industrial and music gear that's looking for other specific things. (the SCSI2SD is thusly configurable,
The most recent overall comparisons we've got in performance of some different options were provided by @Fizzbinn here:
At the moment, none of these options is as fast as the potential a high end or modern disk can be. e.g. except in seek times Fizzbin's Savvio probably should top the charts, as a disk from probably 2005 or so. My experience with the SCSI2SD v6 has been that it's fast enough and generally feels sprightly in use on the PowerMac 8600, although the 8600 specifically is new enough that there's other options like PCI SCSI/IDE/SATA cards, so my take generally is that the scsi2sd v6 should be reserved for x100 PowerMacs and that most 68k Macs are probably well-enough served by the v5.
There's also the rascsi, which I haven't tracked closely. When it first came into being, it cost more than a scsi2sd v5 to build and was slower. It's my understanding that it has sped up a lot, perhaps with the pi4, but the disclaimer still applies that I don't have the latest on it. It's less "appliancized" than any of the other options, but, in that as pi speed boosts it could have the potential for the greatest performance.
General note as always for any of the SD-based solutions is that they generally want the best SD card you can get and benefit from buying further upscale.