Strange and different: 1987 Mac 40SC Enclosed SCSI Tape Backup

[cstorms]

And now for something strange and different. At least I think so, curious if others have seen this. 

A 1987 Apple Mac SCSI SC40 Tape Backup fully enclosed. Please see photos. It is unlike any tape backup I've ever seen, in that there is nowhere to put in a tape! I recently purchased this on ebay, driven by curiosity since it looked like a nice SCSI hard drive which would fit well with my vintage Macs. I googled it prior to buying, and only found the expected enclosures which accept tapes, like that shown in the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Tape_Backup_40SC

I tried it with a Mac IIci and was unable to get the drive recognized using LIDO which very reliably finds all my other SCSI devices. Tried a few different SCSI IDs including 2,5,6 and got either no device found or the Mac failed to boot. 

Opened it up and found this MONSTROUS internal Quantum drive Model Q250 which looks like an oversized hard drive and appears to be original, is it a hard drive or is it some kind of enclosed tape drive? I googled the drive number and there's a seller on ebay selling these as hard drives. So is it really just a hard drive that is intended to act like a backup? And they called it a Tape Backup? Weird. 

Anyway, just thought it was bizarre and unique enough to share here with fellow 68k Mac enthusiasts. Not exactly sure what I will do with it ... 

All the photos I've seen of the 40SC have openings for removable tapes. Any additional info on use of this internal drive is welcome.

Craig

 

[jsarchibald]

It's not a Tape Backup 40SC, it's a Hard Disk 40SC.  Same case style, same period of time, two very different storage mediums.

I've come across mainly 20SC's where I live, have only seen these in pictures.

 

[Themk]

Yup, the Tape Backup 40SC, and the Hard Disk 40SC are completely different. That being said though, I could see where you might have confused it, as they are both "40SC". Anyway, your enclosure has little yellowing, and looks to be in good shape overall. I would recommend replacing the Quantum 40meg HDD with something faster, higher capacity, or a SCSI2SD.

 

[cstorms]

Sorry I meant to post a 4th photo ... here now. This external SCSI device is a 'Tape Backup 40SC' model number M2640.

I agree it appears to actually be an internal SCSI drive, which was my guess when I purchased it, but it's definitely labeled as a Tape Backup. I suppose somebody could have taken two cases and swapped them or something but that seems pretty unlikely. Case pieces match perfectly, including the aged plastic color which is surprisingly un-yellowed.

Weird. Maybe just a quirk they released this way to use up spare parts?

Thanks for the replies.

~C 

 

[Johnnya101]

Sorry to say, but theres no way anyone did anything to make that a 40SC drive. Thats always been one. Ive got a 20SC which is the same pretty much and the internal is identical.

Case design mix up?

I now see thats a sticker. Someone could have maybe switched them out?

 

[jsarchibald]

Hmm, interesting.  That bottom piece is one part isn't it?  Meaning that the missing slot goes with that label on the bottom?

Maybe a factory fault, but surprising as they seem to have been pretty particular up to that point in time.

 

[unity]

What is the serial. And is the serial label on a different plastic part from the tape label?

 

[cstorms]

Here's a photo showing the serial number, and another showing the inside top and bottom case with hand written dates 11/7/87 and 11/8/87.

Weird. Agree this was a factory HD just strange the way it's labeled.

 

 

[unity]

M2644 at the end of the serial indicates the Hard Drive 40SC.

As seen here....

https://www.recycledgoods.com/apple-m2644-40mb-scsi-quantum-40sc-hard-disk/

So thats weird. That label on the bottom is, well, wrong? Is there one under it?

 

[Themk]

Looks like the label was improperly installed, either that or someone installed a label on top of the original Hard Drive label. Interesting...

 

[cstorms]

My guess is this may have been assembled by somebody inside Apple who knew the parts fit because it does seem unlikely they would sell this thing mislabeled. So the serial number is right but the product and model number label is wrong. Seems silly to go to the trouble of moving the product label just to make it wrong. 

Anyway ... seems the old ginormous drive isn't all that healthy. Connected it directly to a IIci and got a sad mac icon on startup. So it's on a shelf now. The huge drive bracket actually did fit a standard sized drive and I replaced it successfully with a 1 GB drive and reassembled. Looks nice sitting under my SE/30 and gives me extra disk space and the option to boot into Sys 7.5.5. All good.

Here's a few more pictures to show the inside configuration of the 40SC before and after replacement of the monstrous Quantum Q250. 

Thanks for the good discussion.

~C

  

 

[Themk]

That 'monstrous' drive you are talking about is a 5 1/4 inch hard drive. Most hard drives are 3 1/5 inch.

 

[Carboy7]

That's a big drive...

 

[Johnnya101]

Well if you look at the bottom pieces for the tape and this drive, they are different... I don't see how they could have fit?

 

[CC_333]

You call that monstrous? My II has a hard drive that is at least twice as tall, and very much heavier.

I'll have to find a picture of it and post it....

Also, my IIx has one of these 5.25" Quantums in it.

As far as I know, both of these work, but as the machines they're installed in don't (both need recapping and new batteries), I haven't been able to test them other than to power them on using an external power source (they spun up and made normal noises, so that's good?)

c

 

[cstorms]

This was the first hard drive I've seen that was the size of a CD Rom Drive. Right I know the older full height drives are big and heavy too ... this one just made me look at it and say 'what IS this thing?' Since the enclosure was marked as a tape backup drive it was extra confusing. 

This drive made reasonable mild startup sounds, but didn't work. The hard drive spins up nicely but the drive itself failed to be recognized. I tried it in a few places, including other external SCSI enclosures and internally with a couple of vintage macs. Hopefully yours work. 

Slowly but surely I'm migrating over to the nice SCSI2SD boards that are a brilliant solution to the dying SCSI drive problem. Installed one in a Quadra 950 easy installation works beautifully. Only thing I need now is a better mounting system, as the card needs to be secured. 

~C

 

[olePigeon]

Too bad the larger capacity Quantum Bigfoots were IDE only.  The highest they go for SCSI that I could find is that 250MB one that Apple used.  Otherwise they were 1GB and larger, which I would have liked to get.

 

[Themk]

Too bad that they were IDE only, I agree. Perhaps they went with IDE because they felt like people who would be buying SCSI drives would want 3.5-inch. It could also be that by the time these drives were released, manufactures of SCSI workstations had mostly switched to 3.5-inch drives. Maybe they felt like the PC market was a better place to sell these drives, so IDE it was.

I dunno, just rambling on about what it could be...

 

[Cory5412]

Neat find, I'm guessing it was mislabeled at some point, especially since the bottom case has the serial indicating HD40SC on it as well.

I don't believe any Bigfoots were SCSI. The drive here is just old.

I think when Bigfoot was released, Quantum built them as IDE drives probably for the same reason SyQuest's had a cheap-big cartridge format that only existed for PCs: Mac users were willing to, and routinely did, pay more for all manner of peripherals, and generally demanded as much speed and capacity as possible.

Bigfoots were essentially the modern version of today's Seagate Archive and desktop Backup disks. Big and slow, a cheap way to store a lot of data that you should probably be putting on something better.

Another thing to note, not a whole lot of Macs had free 5.25-inch bays, especially pretty early in the '90s when the one 5.25 bay in most Macs had a CD drive in it.

A big-slow external SCSI disk would have been intriguing, but I think part of the Mac's pre-IDE problem was that RISC/UNIX and server customers had to also want whatever was being built for SCSI otherwise the market was going to be too small.