New Disk Emulator - "Tiny SCSI Emulator"

[EvilCapitalist]

To be honest, I see the "everybody should have $SKILL if you want to use $VINTAGE_COMPUTER" line parroted all over the place and to be perfectly honest, I think it's toxic, and I think it's straight-up shenanigans.

Everybody grab a broom!



Anyway, back on topic.

You don't buy them. You build them. Hence why the board layout, parts list and necessary code are available for download.

Why is it so hard for mac people to realize that hobby accessories aren't always pre-assembled masterpieces? Get your feet wet and your hands dirty.

This "holier than thou" type attitude is exactly what turns people off to hobbies like this.  I'm going to declare a smug alert.

 

[Gorgonops]

you can own one without any skill, but can be expensive in the long run...

And sometimes it's not a matter of skill, it's a matter of choosing your battles. Some of us, possibly most of us, have only so many hours in the day and days in the year we can devote to a hobby. While it may *totally* float some people's boats to find the hardest possible way to come up with a solution to replacing a dead SCSI drive in their Macintosh SE there are plenty of others who'd rather save that time for pursuing some other aspect of the hobby that interests them more, and I see absolutely no reason why we should fling insults or insinuations at those who choose to budget their lives differently.

Again, what's really stupid about this is we're not even comparing apples and oranges here. The SCSI2SD is essentially a mature product at this point; it's about as cheap as such a thing can reasonably cost, it's available fully assembled, and it's about as plug-and-play as you can reasonably expect. The device under discussion here is still basically in the "research project" stage, where SCSI2SD was *some years ago*, and isn't even *remotely* finished nor "feature complete", whatever "feature complete" might happen to mean for something that is *intended* to be a veritable Tinkertoy set for emulating SCSI devices. If all you want is a working, reliable SCSI storage device replacement it's very much NOT what you should be buying right now. That is not a strike against it, it's simply a reflection of the state of the project. When it's "done" it might be a better storage device than SCSI2SD is (on top of everything else it's supposed to do), it might not be but makes up for it through being more flexible, whatever, who knows. Point is there's absolutely no reason why these two things can't coexist and be judged on their own merits without infantile name calling.

 

[just.in.time]

Wow... it's getting pretty smug in here.

I was going to post a comparison to a real life scenario, but I think I'm going to just leave the one line

 

[Cory5412]

My apologies in advance, this post is going to be a little poorly structured because I jumped around while writing it and I'm on a morning time crunch to leave the house and go to work:

The whole concept of the original post is smug. It presumes you have the skills, time, equipment, and wherewithal to build the Tiny SCSI Emulator. (And that somehow for those reasons alone, it's better than the SCSI2SD.)

I think there are plenty of situations where that's not worthwhile. People for whom it's literally less expensive to buy a SCSI2SD than buy start-up materials, spend some time learning, and then build a TSE.

Hell, for some people, it's not even a money thing. Between my chronic illness and my job, I don't really have the physical wherewithal or the motivation to "do things" in my off time. I'm not living a particularly lavish lifestyle (in my 1200sf with my new housemate). But I can set aside a little bit of money to build a "send off to be recapped" fund (since that is acknowledged the most common needed repair for '90s modular Macs, which is what I have) and to save for a scsi2sd and perhaps a floppyemu. These aren't things I "need" and I can make do without them (my systems have fortunately been very well cared for their entire lives), and yes, it's physically possible for me to learn soldering and build a TSE or recap my Macs, but that's not why I came here fifteen years ago (actually it might be sixteen now) and it's not something I personally find fun.

And yes, troubleshooting is a different skill, I literally do tech support for a living, so I'm aware of that. But how frequent are hardware failures here? Especially board-level troubleshooting? Something like 90% of the troubleshooting (dead PSU, floppy disk drive needs maintenance or replacement, hard disk needs maintenance, PRAM battery is dead) that occurs here is both stuff that we did fifteen years ago, before to my knowledge literally anybody had recapped any Macs, and is all stuff that's covered in the manuals that came with these old machines.

So I don't think it's smug to say that I don't think everybody should have to learn soldering to do recaps or build simple peripherals in order to even be here on this site, and I don't think it's smug to suggest that in a friendly community with a peer-to-peer marketplace, the people who do can't both give back and earn an extra few dollars. I think that as a site, we should be able to accomodate and maybe even encourage as normal and reasonable both ways, and assist people moving from one situation to another.

But that's not the tone I see so often. The tone I see so often is that if you're not a pro at soldering you shouldn't bother with vintage computers at all, and I consider that to be a shame, because that attitude makes people who are less physically or technically inclined miss out on a lot of fun and history and productivity. That's not new though, and it's not something that'll change overnight. It is something we can talk about and frame in a way that hopefully incentivizes us to try to make it easier for newcomers.

 

[Elfen]

I don't know what it's called, but I know the ThinkPad 360C used it.

The 700 series also has this same connector - but it is IDE. Its the damn connector that is Proprietary. You can break that case open and swap the drive, as that connector has a ribbon that goes to the hard drive's IDE Port; it is not part of the hard drive as he stated. I've taken many of these apart to know this. Some are metal and others are plastic; his looks like one of the plastic ones.

I do not know of any 1990s generation of the ThinkPad that has a SCSI hard drive in it. There might be one or two but I never seen it myself, and I have a collection of 500 - 700 ThinkPads parallel to my PowerBook Collection. And many of the ThinkPads I put in a CF with a CF-2-IDE adapter in them because their IDE hard drives died a long time ago.

But for PowerBooks, with the right SCSI adapter this device would be great.

 

[just.in.time]

The whole concept of the original post is smug.

Just to be clear, my statement regarding this thread and many posts within being smug was in agreement with what you said.

 

[Elfen]

My apologies in advance, this post is going to be a little poorly structured because I jumped around while writing it and I'm on a morning time crunch to leave the house and go to work:

The whole concept of the original post is smug. It presumes you have the skills, time, equipment, and wherewithal to build the Tiny SCSI Emulator. (And that somehow for those reasons alone, it's better than the SCSI2SD.)

I think there are plenty of situations where that's not worthwhile. People for whom it's literally less expensive to buy a SCSI2SD than buy start-up materials, spend some time learning, and then build a TSE.

Hell, for some people, it's not even a money thing. Between my chronic illness and my job, I don't really have the physical wherewithal or the motivation to "do things" in my off time. I'm not living a particularly lavish lifestyle (in my 1200sf with my new housemate). But I can set aside a little bit of money to build a "send off to be recapped" fund (since that is acknowledged the most common needed repair for '90s modular Macs, which is what I have) and to save for a scsi2sd and perhaps a floppyemu. These aren't things I "need" and I can make do without them (my systems have fortunately been very well cared for their entire lives), and yes, it's physically possible for me to learn soldering and build a TSE or recap my Macs, but that's not why I came here fifteen years ago (actually it might be sixteen now) and it's not something I personally find fun.

And yes, troubleshooting is a different skill, I literally do tech support for a living, so I'm aware of that. But how frequent are hardware failures here? Especially board-level troubleshooting? Something like 90% of the troubleshooting (dead PSU, floppy disk drive needs maintenance or replacement, hard disk needs maintenance, PRAM battery is dead) that occurs here is both stuff that we did fifteen years ago, before to my knowledge literally anybody had recapped any Macs, and is all stuff that's covered in the manuals that came with these old machines.

So I don't think it's smug to say that I don't think everybody should have to learn soldering to do recaps or build simple peripherals in order to even be here on this site, and I don't think it's smug to suggest that in a friendly community with a peer-to-peer marketplace, the people who do can't both give back and earn an extra few dollars. I think that as a site, we should be able to accomodate and maybe even encourage as normal and reasonable both ways, and assist people moving from one situation to another.

But that's not the tone I see so often. The tone I see so often is that if you're not a pro at soldering you shouldn't bother with vintage computers at all, and I consider that to be a shame, because that attitude makes people who are less physically or technically inclined miss out on a lot of fun and history and productivity. That's not new though, and it's not something that'll change overnight. It is something we can talk about and frame in a way that hopefully incentivizes us to try to make it easier for newcomers.

I could not agree with you any more. Just because one does not have racing skills when we get behind the wheel and drive our cars does not make us bad drivers, even professional drivers as in cab/taxi, trucks and emergency services driving.

People do not need to know how to solder to diagnose their machines. They can figure out what is wrong with it and then if it needs soldering, get someone to do the job for you. At least you know what needs to be done.

I'm not the "best" or "most informed" member of the forum but I know what I know through experience and learn everyday something new. So let me state A bit of off-topicness which does connect to this discussion.

2015 I bought a couple of Raspberry Pi Model Bs from ebay because the sellers said that they were broken. I spent like $5 for each of them. 2 of them (from the same seller) had crushed ports and shorted out ports. I asked to what happened to do this but the seller would not budge in giving me the story. The other the seller admits to sending 12V into the GPIO to power up the .Raspberry Pi for some robotics project and believes that he fried it to death. A Fourth one had its SD Card holder broken and could not hold the SD card in place. The Seller says that somebody tripped over its power cable and sent the unit flying until it crashed into a wall. He did add that it does boot from the SD Card if you use a tiny wood clamp t hold the SD card in place in the broken SD Card Slot.

I diagnosed the problem with the 3 R-Pi's; with the one with the crushed ports had their pins shorting against the case. Cutting the wires to eliminate the short fixed it, but it now has no ports. The one with the broken SD Card holder worked as he describe with a tiny wood clamp holding the SD card in place. The fried one was tricky. It did boot up if one used a 5V 2A power adapter, but  checking the voltages they were found to be off the scale. The 5V line was all over the place from 4.1V to 6V and was not steady. The 3.3 line read zero. I looked them over with a magnifying glass and found 3.3V regulator to be cracked, and the 5V regulator to have a bulge in it.

Luck for me I can solder. Because I submitted these findings to the R-Pi forum and I was basically told by everyone (including the admins) to throw them away and buy new ones. For me the hard part was finding the parts.  Mouser had the regulators, and I found the SD Card Slot Holder, compatible USB Ports and a compatible Ethernet port for the RPi's on ebay, though they were not cheap.

It took a long time, because they used a high temp non-Lead solder which was difficult to remove. But in replacing the broken parts, I got 4 working R-Pis that the original owners considered as dead. Funny - the one with the replaced ports, that model uses Black USB Ports, and I used White UBS Ports, making these two the only R-Pis of this model to have White Ports! Similarly, the broken SD Card was replaced too and it too works like it should. The hardest was the regulars replacement, as those are some damn tiny connections! But now it can now boot up and run with a 5V 1.5A power adapter and the voltages are rock steady!

Then I reported back to the R-Pi and posted up my repairs. I dd not believe that many were bothered and even angered that someone would take their time to fix a broken R-Pi. Even the Admins stated, 'This is great that you fixed them but we do not recommend anyone into fixing their R-Pi's. They are cheap enough for one to buy a new one in case they accidentally kill their old one." There were a few members that were ecstatic in what I did but the majority of the group was totally against it. (WHY?!!)

What does this have to do with Macs? Like you stated, one does not need to know how to solder to fix their machines. But if they diagnose their machines that it does need some solder work on it, they are ahead of the game in knowing what needs to be done and send it out to get that part done for them. You can even buy the replacement parts that needs to be soldered and send out the board with the parts. Soldering is a nice skill to have but it is not a life & death skill to have.

 

[EvieSigma]

You don't even need to have a problem to want recapping done. I should probably get all my surface mount cap machines done...

 

[CelGen]

This "holier than thou" type attitude is exactly what turns people off to hobbies like this.  I'm going to declare a smug alert.

smug alert.gif

This is encouragement. This is a challenge.

This is someone telling you to try something extremely cool that does not require expensive tools and gives skills you can use outside of a computing hobby.

If you want to say it's smug, sure but that's a pretty damn lame reason to be smug. If this was welding or brazing that would be different but this is literally using a hot piece of metal to melt lead and join bits of copper and wire together.

 

[bibilit]

BTW the SCSI2SD is still available in DIY mode ??

 

[redrouteone]

I have friends that have the same attitude about taking your car to the mechanic. I used to work on my own cars and have done everything from oil changes to rebuilding engines. About 3 years ago I decided I was tried of spending my free time working on my car. It is so nice just to drop my car off and then come back the next day and my car is fixed. I hate spending my Saturday outside in the heat all pissed off because the part I need to remove is being contrary.

It is the same thing here. I know how to solder, but it can be rather frustrating to troubleshoot the thing and find the bad solder joint or the component you installed backwards. Sometimes I'd rather spend the day enjoying the thing, that all frustrated in putting it together.

It is a good option that people can put it together them selves if they want, but there is nothing wrong with someone not wanting to do that.

 

[techknight]

Taking cars to a shop instead of fixing it yourself always irked me. 

I have seen so many cases of bolts forgotten to be put back into places, improperly torqued specs and split gaskets, Oil drain plugs not tightened all the way, Double-gasketted oil filters, etc.. etc.. etc...

It scares the hell out of me. 

There are alot of shady and inexperienced mechanics. 

But weeding through all those and finding the best and most perfect mechanic is kinda difficult. 

 

[Carboy7]

You don't buy them. You build them. Hence why the board layout, parts list and necessary code are available for download.

Why is it so hard for mac people to realize that hobby accessories aren't always pre-assembled masterpieces? Get your feet wet and your hands dirty.

Do you really think us Mac users actually build computers? Nope, we let the professionals do that.

I have *some* experience in soldering and building 'electronics'. (little things that plug into an arduino uno) But I...

don't have the time or the capacity to bust out a multimeter or trace lines through a board.

 I don't have much interest in fixing things. If something hardware-related happens to one of my Macs, I shove it in the corner and forget about it.

Back to the point: If this TinySCSI was built and shipped for about $10 more then the DIY model, I'm pretty sure people would spend that extra $10.

This is a good idea, though.

 

[aperezbios]

I'd like the SCSI2SD if the developer hadn't dropped all firmware updates to the old version in place of the newer verison, which isn't even that much of an improvement....

This is factually inaccurate, and you should be ashamed of yourself for making such claims. The last firmware *release* for SCSI2SD V5 was just over one year ago, and there hasn't been another because it's 4.6 is very stable. 

 

[aperezbios]

It *used* to be fully open source, but starting with v5 boards, the hardware design is "not currently open source".

The V4 board uses the exact same firmware as the V5. That PCB is fully published and open. The V5 boards have only been sold fully assembled, so I'm not really sure what the original poster was smoking. TinySCSI is great, but the use of legacy silicon is not ideal for a variety of technical, environmental compliance, and business reasons, which others have already pointed out. That said, I think it's a very neat and useful thing, and especially if the Ethernet gets fully mature, I'm sure it will do well. 

 

[Bunsen]

B: While not exactly a deal breaker the fact that it relies on old-stock SCSI chips that mostly seem to be available only on eBay as pulls again puts it at a disadvantage compared to the SCSI2SD for mass production.

Far as I can tell most of the SCSI PHYs on ebay and other parts outlets seem to be NOS (New Old Stock) rather than pulls.  And there doesn't at present seem to be any shortage that would cause a niche hobby project like this to grind to a halt.

 

[Scott Squires]

The V4 board uses the exact same firmware as the V5. That PCB is fully published and open. The V5 boards have only been sold fully assembled, so I'm not really sure what the original poster was smoking.

This is very unclear. It sounds like you're agreeing with joethezombie, while accusing him of being high. Unless you're saying that the SCSI2SD v5 hardware is open source? If so, you should have Inertial Computing correct their web site, which says "Note: The hardware design for SCSI2SD v5 not currently open source, unlike version 4." (http://store.inertialcomputing.com/category-s/100.htm) Some time ago I looked around the git repo for v5 design files, but only found files from 2014 tagged with v4.

 

[Gorgonops]

 This is very unclear. It sounds like you're agreeing with joethezombie, while accusing him of being high.

I don't know, it seemed reasonably clear to me. He's saying it's dirty-pool to try to claim that this other project is better because you "can't" build your own SCSI2SD on the basis of the v5 PCB layout not being "open source", because if you really feel like you must make your own you could just use the open v4 layout, which uses the same firmware and is therefore (presumably) functionally equivalent.

 

[Scott Squires]

Oh, he was quoting joethezombie but the smoking remark was referring to CelGen. I agree CelGen's post baselessly attacked SCSI2SD and was out of line.

 

[okto]

Get your feet wet and your hands dirty.

If you're getting your feet wet building a SCSI emulator, you're doing it extremely wrong.


How well has this project and your attitude about it gone, since seven years later, nobody's ever heard of it?