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PowerBook 500 series hard drives
- Thread starter blackbird
- Start date
equill
Well-known member
In my experience of several PB 500 series machines, they were supplied with IBM SCSI drives, which I have found to be entirely satisfactory in capacities up to 1.1 or 1.2GB. I have also used Seagate SCSI drives in 500s. What prompts your question? A 2.5-in 5400rpm 19mm SCSI HDD is just a drive. The installed System and the PB's controller have more effect on the usefulness of drives than other factors.
There were adapter cards that allowed the use of IDE drives in place of SCSI drives, with the advantages of obtainability, cheapness and so on, but unless the landfills are full of them, they seem not to have been widely used.
de
There were adapter cards that allowed the use of IDE drives in place of SCSI drives, with the advantages of obtainability, cheapness and so on, but unless the landfills are full of them, they seem not to have been widely used.
de
Franklinstein
Well-known member
Of all the 500 series machines I've owned, the vast majority (with drives installed) have been IBM models. Of those, the vast majority are still kicking; I've only had a couple fail, though unfortunately they tended to be the higher capacity ones.
I did get one or two with SCSI->ATA adapters, but older ones are a tad slow. I'd use them only if I needed much larger capacity drives or I had no options for replacement (it's hard to find 2.5" SCSI drives at all, let alone over 500MB).
As for your question about interchangeability, yes, they're perfectly swappable with every PowerBook 1xx series machine save for the 150 and 190 (which are ATA-based). The only real consideration is capacity, of course: many old 'Books have drives in the 40-80MB range, where the 500 series generally had 120MB minimum installed.
I did get one or two with SCSI->ATA adapters, but older ones are a tad slow. I'd use them only if I needed much larger capacity drives or I had no options for replacement (it's hard to find 2.5" SCSI drives at all, let alone over 500MB).
As for your question about interchangeability, yes, they're perfectly swappable with every PowerBook 1xx series machine save for the 150 and 190 (which are ATA-based). The only real consideration is capacity, of course: many old 'Books have drives in the 40-80MB range, where the 500 series generally had 120MB minimum installed.
register
Well-known member
A used 2.5" SCSI harddisk drive in reliable condition is not too easy to find. The Fujitsu drives were a good choice, when new (silent and fast). You also might consider the suggestions collected in our Wiki http://68kmla.org/wiki/SCSI_harddisk_replacement_options
