Question About CF Card in PB180

[jwmcfarlin]

I've done enough looking around to be convinced that asking the advice of someone who's done a lot of this sort of thing is the way to go. So, that said:

Has anyone here put a CF Card into a PB180 for a hard drive? I have a PB1400c that plays nice with a CF Card, but I notice that the pins on the hard drives are different for the drive that's in the PB1400 and the drive that's in the PB180. Both of them are 50-pin drives, just that different pins are missing. The PB180 hard drive cable connector has a blocked pin, so I lined up the 44-pin Addonics adapter with 7.6.1 loaded on it so that it fit, but no luck.

Best,

John

 

[beachycove]

The PB180 (like all 68k PBs but the 150 and the 190) uses a SCSI rather than an IDE drive. Your 1400 uses IDE. That drive isn't going to work in your 180.

There are SCSI-IDE laptop adapters from the early 90s (in fact, Apple sold them in some PB540c and 550c models, with 750MB or so IDE drives fitted to an adapter), and there were aftermarket products sold for a time that did the same thing for PB owners wanting more strorage. Also, there is a new product available from a Japanese eBay seller specifically for CF storage in PowerBooks, but these are now either relatively rare, or else in the latter case price is a factor. But it can be done if you have the patience or the will.

I have, however, seen the OEM adapters sold on here once every couple of years or so, so you could try your luck — or else just buy a non-functional old scsi PowerBook and cannibalize it for the drive.

 

[Bunsen]

http://home.comcast.net/~macdan/pb_scsi_ata.html

http://68kmla.org/wiki/SCSI_harddisk_replacement_options

http://68kmla.org/wiki/Flash_Drive_Test_Results

 

[jwmcfarlin]

Thanks for the pointers--I expect that that I'll write this up as a project file for others to try if they like, so I appreciate it. Though what is more likely--and realistic--is that I will give up because of the cost of equipment or some other barrier and just either buy a 50-pin 2.5" scsi spinning platter hard drive or just run the existing hard drive until it gives out or cannibalize one out of another machine.

That doesn't come across very positive, do it? Sorry.

Best,

John

 

[register]

A PB180 with a CF card in place of the SCSI harddisk drive is a decent thing to play with, using the Artmix CF-SCSI adaptor. The performance is excellent (reads at top speed and writes pretty fast, compared to a huge 500 MB 2.5" SCSI harddisk drive) and it is quiet.

For a low budget you may remove the internal drive and use any external SCSI drive to keep the PB180 operational. If you can snatch an old SCSI laptop drive for nothing, get it. I would not spend much for an old drive (15+ years minimum, unknown history and storage condition), as the money might better be saved for reliable gear.