Tecmar Drive For 128K & 512K Mac

[Mac128]

Saw this on eBay only too late to bid. One of the few hard drives which will work on a Mac 128K. Amazing condition.

 

[joshc]

That's a great find - must be very rare in that condition. Considering this, $78.88 is peanuts. I have a very similar external SCSI drive, a 5.25" full height drive inside a Formac enclosure - it is an absolute monster.

 

[JDW]

it is an absolute monster.

Which is the lone reason I did not bid on it. My wife would have killed me. I get away with more compact purchases though. He he.

 

[Bunsen]

that could be connected through the serial (printer or modem) port

We need those drivers ...

 

[napabar]

Yes we do. That could open up some doors, huh?

 

[Bunsen]

So - who's gonna contact the seller and see if we can get in touch with the buyer?

 

[Mac128]

So here's a recent Tecmar drive sale on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250993088572

So the seller says this:

Tecmar made several versions of the Mac Drive.  All of them shipped with at least one 5 megabyte removable cartridge (Winchester-type) drive in the lower slot.  The upper slot could be empty, filled with a second 5MB cartridge drive, or filled with a 5 or 10 megabyte hard drive.  This particular Mac Drive has the 5MB cartridge drive in the lower slot and an empty upper slot.  I do not have any Tecmar cartridges, so I am unable to test whether the cartridge drive works beyond seeing that it is found by the software.

This suggests that a compatible drive could be popped in and formatted by the Tecmar software. Anybody got any idea what kind of drive would work in this? I'm assuming MFM, or ST-506 compatible? I'm sure the manual indicates. Unlike Apple Tecmar probably has a section on user servicing.

What would be the purpose of having a tape drive without a hard disk to back up? Or was it designed to back up your floppies as well as a hard drive? I wouldn't think it could be used in real time. My guess is that the hard drive was removed at some point for use in a faster SCSI device.

FYI Bunsen, I'm getting a disk image of the software for us to dissect.

 

[techknight]

Would be nice if it would talk to the macbottom HDD. Research concludes on macbottom, that Symantec utilities 1.1 would work with HD20/macbottom/etc, but i havent found a copy.

 

[Mac128]

I have something called Symantec Tools 1.0. Is that the same thing? I see in the disk drive parameter volume folder three MacBottom configurations, 20/32/40. It also defines the Apple HD20 in two configurations, HD20 and SCSI. Interestingly it does not make the distinction with the MacBottom, which was also in a serial and SCSI configuration. There is no Tecmar drive.

Are you saying this utility should format these drives so they are recognized by the Mac System without dedicated mounting software? Otherwise it's kind of pointless. There's an HD Partition INIT and DA, an HFS Recover tool, but no MFS tool. The Tools are all dated early to mid 1988. The disk profiles are all dated February 1987. All well after the advent of HFS and SCSI. Though the fact it distinguishes between the SCSI and non-SCSI HD20 is a good indication it understands MFS.

 

[techknight]

not sure about symantec tools, I am talking about Symantec Utilities for Macintosh Version 1.1 before it became Norton. From the Wiki, it supposedly understands the old HDD systems as well as the more modern.

 

[JDW]

Symantec Tools is a newer variant that sprang forth from the older Symantec Utilities for Macintosh (SUM). I have version 1.1 of SUM. Symantec Tools is part of Disk Clinic (which I also have a copy of). You can read a little about it here:

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=4D4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=%22Symantec+Tools%22+%22disk+clinic%22+Macintosh&source=bl&ots=uAxjuSsYTc&sig=eyn9HkG4OlnYB9GAVjBWktA2log&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yUtIT-CdBebJmQXg_5CbDg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Symantec%20Tools%22%20%22disk%20clinic%22%20Macintosh&f=false

And this is about SUM II (which I unfortunately do not have a copy of) and the new (at the time) NUM 2.0:

http://www.greenstone.org/greenstone3/nzdl;jsessionid=63B13065877ACF8BBAE0B35325490128?a=d&book=off&c=tidbits&d=HASH01f97598667865312d925cba.6&dt=hierarchy&p.a=b&p.sa=&p.s=ClassifierBrowse

 

[techknight]

Would be nice to have to see if it would recognize the macbottom serial HDD as it is.

 

[Mac128]

http://books.google.com/books?id=cDoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT33&lpg=PT33&dq=%22symantec+utilities+for+macintosh%22&source=bl&ots=Y2Su_s9aW0&sig=dB8JW6w_GmuKuf2wJ7PYlEDhPrI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N-FKT47pGeXhiAL5l8nbDQ&ved=0CEcQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=%22symantec%20utilities%20for%20macintosh%22&f=false

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/hd20.html

 

[Gorgonops]

Though the fact it distinguishes between the SCSI and non-SCSI HD20 is a good indication it understands MFS.

Minor nit: What does MFS have to do with the HD20? The HD20 is, so far as I know, always formatted HFS even when used with a 64k ROM Mac. (The HD20 init adds HFS support.)

 

[Mac128]

Confused myself, I meant non-SCSI drive like the serial MacBottom, was probably thinking MFM (correctly or not) having previously written MFS.

Not that clarification isn't important, but just so this isn't a totally wasted post, it occurs to me that the serial MacBottom was a 10MB drive, yet the drive profiles in the Tools disk begin with 20MB. So my previous conclusion may not be entirely valid.

 

[Gorgonops]

Just for a minor additional note of clarification, I was genuinely puzzled if "MFS Support" was something you were explicitly looking for. Presumably a Mac hard disk which *did* work with the 128k Mac would have its volumes formatted as MFS (as the original Hyperdrive with its "drawers" was) or otherwise would present its storage in a non-HFS manner.

(I wouldn't consider it a slam dunk that a serial-based hard disk for the Mac would actually use the Mac filesystem directly. It's quite possible a drive like that would format its disk in some proprietary way internally and behave more like a file server than a drive. Granted I have no idea how any particular unit might work without having a chance to read some documentation.)

 

[Some_Person]

I have SUM II on floppies. If anyone wants it, I can image it and upload it somwehere