Performa 550 HD/CD-ROM

[LCARS]

Hello everyone. My post serves two purposes: to introduce myself and to get some SCSI HD help.

I've been building up a collection of classic Macs (68k and PowerPC) and have rediscovered the greatness of System 7. I had a Performa 550 as a little kid, which has long since been given away. I found one a few weeks ago and am in the process of doing a few upgrades. I am happy to have found this website.

I have been having the hardest time finding a small (2GB or less) SCSI HD. Am I correct in thinking that this machine takes a 50 pin 3.5" drive? Will any brand do? or does it have to be Apple branded?

Lastly, the CD-ROM drive is loud and I think on its way out. Will any SCSI drive/speed work?

 

[30pin]

A newer hardrive will make a big difference in how fast your computer will feel. It needs a 50 pin scsi drive. I used to get these drives out of scrapped PowerMacs (250-500mb) and put the drives into my collection of Compact Macs. Works fine. I have a Performa 520 that I have upped the ram and replaced the drive in too. It is Running O.S. 7.5.3. I found a bunch of 1gb hardrives in an old IBM server. So far I have not had any luck getting these to work in my 520. The cd drive in the 520 has the removable tray, I think your 550 is like the 575. These drives are available with a number of different speeds. I would think if they plug in they would work. 2x-8x is the usual range that I have seen. System 7 is great to work with!!

 

[beachycove]

http://lowendmac.com/sable/07/mac-drive-setup-patch.html says it all: any 50-pin scsi drive (though best if >2GB for use in a 550) can be used in principle.

However, without a third party utility or a patched version of HD Setup, only drives with Apple Roms can be used - in other words, drives with an Apple marked on them (or that came from an Apple machine). Thus the patch is a good thing to have, or something like Silverlining if you want to go third party, because it widens the possibilities to include the sort of drives 30pin found in that IBM server.

Whatever CD drive you use will require the requisite Extension. As far as I know, a high speed scsi CD like the ones that came in late Beiges like the 9600 will not work with the standard 1st or 2nd generation Extension provided by a stock installation of 7.1 or 7.5, but a CD 300 or 600 should work just fine. You could try popping the extension from 8.1, say, into your 7.1 system folder and see what happens, mind you.... A third party CD Extension would also widen the selection again: there was FWB software that did this, as I recall. Maybe the Toast extension would do the trick, too.

The other limitation I can think of concerns whether the drive (and corresponding Bezel) presently in the 550 in question is tray-loaded or caddy-loaded, because this would limit your choices of replacement.

I'd maybe try disassembly, cleaning and lubrication if the CD drive is noisy — what's there to lose but an hour, during which you just might learn something about the machine and the mechanism?

 

[LCARS]

Thank you 30pin and beachycove. I appreciate your detailed responses.

The CD drive is tray-loaded, so if it really is on its way out, a replacement will be easier to find, but I'll take your advice and try to clean it. 15 years is a long time to go without a cleaning. My original 550 had a caddy-load drive, which in some ways I liked more from an aesthetic point of view.

About Drive Setup, I'm confused about one thing: assuming I've patched the program, how do I format the new HD? I do not have an external enclosure but I do have a IIci and the 550. Could I pop the new HD into one, initiate SCSI Disk Mode, and load the ROM that way? I'm not as "with it" when it comes to System 7 era software and hardware as I am with FireWire and OSX.

 

[tomlee59]

If you do need to format a third-party drive, you can use the patched version of HD SC Setup here:

ftp://grijan.cjb.net:21000/macintosh/Software/Utilities/hd_sc_setup_735-patched.sea.bin

This is Apple's simple formatter, hacked to allow it to operate on non-Apple branded disks.

 

[beachycove]

About Drive Setup, I'm confused about one thing: assuming I've patched the program, how do I format the new HD? I do not have an external enclosure but I do have a IIci and the 550. Could I pop the new HD into one, initiate SCSI Disk Mode, and load the ROM that way? I'm not as "with it" when it comes to System 7 era software and hardware as I am with FireWire and OSX.

Your HD Setup/ patched HD Setup will be on your Disk Tools floppy for whatever system you want to install, let's say 7.5 (a good choice, in my estimation, so long as it's on a 68k machine). You are going to need a new set of system floppies (available online), so the patched version of HD Setup would be located there. You'd boot from the Disk Tools floppy with the patched program, format your 3rd party drive, and away you'd go.

If you search these fora, you most likely will find locations from which to download 7.1 or 7.5; there is a version of 7.5 available on Apple's own servers. I'd stick with the plain-Jane 7.5, but some want to go higher.

 

[LCARS]

Its much clearer now. Thanks for your help. I think I was over complicating matters. I've got a closet full of floppies from my old Mavica (10+ years old)- some still with pictures. I'm amazed at the integrity of 3.5" floppies.