smrieck511
Well-known member
hi, I'm restoring an SE/30 and am looking for any advice in terms of which manufacturer, termination etc. There seems to be several options. Thanks for any help.
CD-ROM emulation like the MacSD now.
You don’t list SCSI2SD as an option here. Are they all discontinued? I have a v5.2 in my SE/30 and I like it fine although it was cumbersome to set up and lacked some of the emulator-portable disk image features of BlueSCSI at the time which came out shortly after I bought it. Perhaps for these reasons it’s been discontinued and replaced by ZuluSCSI.Main ones available now to my knowledge, each with different tradeoffs:
All of these options aside from the BlueSCSI do termination competently and you won't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about it on a BlueSCSI either so long as you don't want to attach any other devices.
- MacSD: extremely feature-rich, especially with features for CD-ROM gaming and easily getting stuff on and off that isn't in disc images. I mostly find myself using mine with early Power Macs, because that's where the features have been most useful to me. Competently designed and built in both hardware and software terms.
- ZuluSCSI: Successor to scsi2sd. Significantly less featureful than MacSD but, in my unscientific experience, a bit more raw performance. Again, competently designed and built. A decent successor.
- Scuzznet: A bit of an outlier; primarily a SCSI to Ethernet device but it will also do disk emulation. I've mostly used these in 000s to give them Ethernet.
- RaSCSI/PiSCSI: The Mac fork of this was recently renamed to PiSCSI (IIRC). To me, this has always felt less like a drop-in drive replacement and more a 'SCSI device construction kit'. It's cool if you like fiddling with things, and it's almost infinitely configurable, but that means that as a "drop-in" device it's somewhat less successful. Swings, roundabouts.
- BlueSCSI: It's cheap and you can build one at home, and beyond this it has almost nothing to recommend it. Dodgy hardware and there are strange timing glitches in the software. Termination isn't done properly. Usable in a 000 if you treat it as disposable. Marketing-heavy, competence-light. The YouTuber's choice. Someone from the project will probably turn up and shout at me below for giving it a less than perfect review.
I don't think it's possible to buy them right now (unless you get the second-hand, because from my understanding the chips they were based on became unobtainable), so they are not really an option (does anyone have them in stock?). I agree that they work well, but also agree that they are a little difficult to set up (compared to the other available choices) and also comparatively more difficult to use with files, so I can see why cheesestraws left them off the list.You don’t list SCSI2SD as an option here
I too was aware of them, have a page bookmarked and the only reason that I haven't picked up a couple is being involved with other projects and the cost. The MacSD is one of those things on my wish list, so I was happy to hear a bit more about it and how it was differentiated, particularly with their excellent support of CD images.Your glowing praise of MacSD is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone even allude to having used one. I was aware it existed but I’ve never encountered anyone who owned one.
5.1 is discontinued. V5.2 and V6 are out of stock due to chip shortages. ZuluSCSI is available instead, made by the same company, I think in some cases it outperforms SCSI2SD as well.You don’t list SCSI2SD as an option here. Are they all discontinued?
I use a MacSD in my Quadra 700 (which is actually a 650 because I put my 650 board in there). It works really well. Easy to setup and well designed.Your glowing praise of MacSD is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone even allude to having used one. I was aware it existed but I’ve never encountered anyone who owned one.
You don’t list SCSI2SD as an option here. Are they all discontinued?
Your glowing praise of MacSD is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone even allude to having used one. I was aware it existed but I’ve never encountered anyone who owned one.
Is there a thread somewhere which objectively documents what about the BlueSCSI exactly is poorly engineered and explains in layman’s terms the risks to our systems?
I saw this yesterday and thought that is really great, I'm up for that! (I usually solder on the extra power and led pins anyway, so a little more soldering would be nice)Zulu is now offered as a kit option as well if your up for soldering on your own headers you can save $10 bucks off the price of a fully assembled one.
Burn out like actually heat up too much or even catch fire?In the simplest terms - the original BlueSCSI didn't implement termination properly. They couldn't be used in a chain with other devices and they can burn out. Aa far as I know they aren't a danger to anything but themselves. There have been improvements in the design recently and the newer versions address those issues.
Also yes the original SCSI2SD's have been discontinued.
Cease functioning.Burn out like actually heat up too much or even catch fire?
I feel better about that.Cease functioning.