Using an SD card with an older USB Mac

[tanaquil]

I have a SCSI2SD and love it. The only annoyance is not being able to write directly onto HFS volumes in Sierra. A lot of my archive is stashed on my modern Mac, and the vast majority of the vintage stuff I work with is pre-HFS+. I can mount the various HFS formatted SCSI2SD volumes in my modern Mac but they are read only.

I could move some of my software archive to my OS 9 MDD, which is the only other machine I have with a hard drive big enough to handle dozens of GB. It would be nice if I could then read and write directly to the micro SD card in my OS 9 mac, which has USB but no SCSI interface. If I plug a USB SD card reader into an OS 9 mac, will the drives mount? The OS 9 mac has no trouble reading various other hard drives and flash drives with a USB interface. (My current SD card reader is a USB-C unit so I would have to spend the princely sum of $20 on a plain USB SD card reader to do this, I can't just plug one in and try it.)

The MDD does have an OS X boot option, if that makes a difference, but it is buggy and I almost never use it. I can't even remember what flavor of OS X it runs - probably 10.2 or similar.

One of these days I will get a G3/G4 era mac set up with both SCSI and USB but that is not this day.

 

[Cory5412]

If I plug a USB SD card reader into an OS 9 mac, will the drives mount

It should! Up to 2TB. I've been using a 2TB WD EasyStore portable hard disk on my QS'02, and I have mounted 32-128GB SD/CF cards using one or two different adapters.

 

[ClassicMac]

I have a SCSI2SD and love it. The only annoyance is not being able to write directly onto HFS volumes in Sierra. A lot of my archive is stashed on my modern Mac, and the vast majority of the vintage stuff I work with is pre-HFS+. I can mount the various HFS formatted SCSI2SD volumes in my modern Mac but they are read only.

I could move some of my software archive to my OS 9 MDD, which is the only other machine I have with a hard drive big enough to handle dozens of GB. It would be nice if I could then read and write directly to the micro SD card in my OS 9 mac, which has USB but no SCSI interface. If I plug a USB SD card reader into an OS 9 mac, will the drives mount? The OS 9 mac has no trouble reading various other hard drives and flash drives with a USB interface. (My current SD card reader is a USB-C unit so I would have to spend the princely sum of $20 on a plain USB SD card reader to do this, I can't just plug one in and try it.)

The MDD does have an OS X boot option, if that makes a difference, but it is buggy and I almost never use it. I can't even remember what flavor of OS X it runs - probably 10.2 or similar.

One of these days I will get a G3/G4 era mac set up with both SCSI and USB but that is not this day.

The MDD goes up to Leopard 10.5. Why not just use that ? 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

He has what's specifically an "OS9 MDD" because OS9 rocks as a retro-computing environment and Leopard is just another species of cat specie MEH.

 

[Cory5412]

I should clarify my comment: I meant, but didn't originally write, that the SD card out of a SCSI2SD (any version, as far as I know) should just mount on a newer Mac with an SD card reader, with no trouble. If you do this, the simpler your partition and disk layout is, the better, 

It doesn't really matter what OS or hardware you use for this particular bridging task so long as it supports reading and writing to HFS disks.

 

[Realitystorm]

I have a SCSI2SD and love it. The only annoyance is not being able to write directly onto HFS volumes in Sierra. A lot of my archive is stashed on my modern Mac, and the vast majority of the vintage stuff I work with is pre-HFS+. I can mount the various HFS formatted SCSI2SD volumes in my modern Mac but they are read only.

I could move some of my software archive to my OS 9 MDD, which is the only other machine I have with a hard drive big enough to handle dozens of GB. It would be nice if I could then read and write directly to the micro SD card in my OS 9 mac, which has USB but no SCSI interface. If I plug a USB SD card reader into an OS 9 mac, will the drives mount? The OS 9 mac has no trouble reading various other hard drives and flash drives with a USB interface. (My current SD card reader is a USB-C unit so I would have to spend the princely sum of $20 on a plain USB SD card reader to do this, I can't just plug one in and try it.)

The MDD does have an OS X boot option, if that makes a difference, but it is buggy and I almost never use it. I can't even remember what flavor of OS X it runs - probably 10.2 or similar.

One of these days I will get a G3/G4 era mac set up with both SCSI and USB but that is not this day.

You can make an image file from your SD card using DD, then mount the image file under Basilisk II, then write the image file back using DD.  http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/05/28/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-creating-your-own-boot-able-disk-image/