Using Magneto Optical drives on vintage 68k Macs

[olePigeon]

On my System 7.1 IIci and IIfx, I had no issues just formatting them regularly on my Fujitsu drive. So it seems odd (to me, anyway) that he's having issues with his disks.

 

[jmacz]

You’ll need to use the drive on a 68040 Mac, using FWB HDT 3.0.2 with 7.6.1 if you can, and delete all partitions that were made including any drivers the software installed on the root hidden partition.

FWB HDT doesn't see any partitions. Tried formatting it using FWB HDT and it went for over an hour and then the drive spun down and FWB hung. Doesn't seem like I'm making much progress here. I will wait to see if @olePigeon can try it later and see if he has any luck with these disks (2 are still unopened). If they work, I guess I need to look into the drive. If they don't, well, I guess it's good that the drive is ok but unfortunate these disks are useless.

 

[jmacz]

BTW, they were Fujitsu branded Dynamo 23.GB, in sealed packaging.

 

[sfp1954]

Cory,

Usually unmanaged gigabit switches from the more budget area of pricing are more difficult to connect with older Macs. At work I use Netgear managed switches for this reason, and I stipulate 10Mb on those ports I have old Macs on. Not so much now but we used to have many IIsi machines with 68040 cards and MacCon Ethernet. Those did not work on off the shelf budget gigabit switches in my scenario.


This is a bigger issue than just myself. I’ve helped a few people last year on Reddit who couldn’t connect their Mac to their networks at home by suggesting an old 10Mb hub or switch or router in between and each time I’ve been thanked because it made it all work.


Ideally I’d have a large work and display area for my vintage Macs at home, with several cable drops for Ethernet, a LocalTalk bridge for those that don’t have Ethernet, and a good test station for machines I’m working on.


Back on topic I am actually eagerly anticipating the arrival of my magneto optical drive and disks. And perhaps I should look for a PCI SCSI card for my G4 so I can attach something like a Jaz to it.


I did find a few higher capacity MO drives that list backwards compatibility to 128MB disks. I’m thinking the better brands would be Fujitsu, Sony and Olympus. If anyone has an suggestions of particular drives and brands to look for and to avoid I would appreciate it. I find the medium intriguing.

Did you ever make any progress on this issue? I picked up a couple of 640 drives from Japan for cheap. Most Adaptec SCSI PCI cards were Mac Compatible. I have several.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Did you ever make any progress on this issue? I picked up a couple of 640 drives from Japan for cheap. Most Adaptec SCSI PCI cards were Mac Compatible. I have several.

I have connected various SCSI MO drives to G4 and G5 Macs using SCSI PCI and SCSI PCIe cards. They work just fine.

Usually, I install a driver on the disk in Mac OS 9/8/7 and that works fine on OS X side. You can format the disks in Disk Utility under OS X but that driver doesn't seem to be as good. Let me know if you need any other info/advice.

 

[jmacz]

@olePigeon tried the 2.3GB discs I'm having issues with on his drive (same one: Fujitsu MCR-3230SS) and the discs worked fine. So that seems to suggest my drive or how I'm using it.

He used the same MO Extension 2.3.8 and MO Disk Formatter 2.3.8 as I did.

I don't think it's something with my computer itself (IIfx) because I tried my drive in a Quadra 800 (mentioned earlier in this thread) and I had the same issue, both under System 7.5.5 and MacOS 8.

The common denominator in terms of my setups: in both my IIfx and Quadra 800, there are only two internal SCSI devices, the MO drive and a ZuluSCSI Compact. The ZuluSCSI has device images for SCSI ID 0, SCSI ID 1, and SCSI ID 2. The MO drive is set to SCSI ID 4. The ZuluSCSI is connected to the middle connector on the SCSI cable and has termination disabled via jumper. The MO drive has termination enabled via its jumper.

Either something wrong with my MO drive or possibly an incompatibility with the ZuluSCSI? @olePigeon has my 2.3GB discs right now so I can't try a test of removing the ZuluSCSI and using a classic spinning SCSI drive right now. I might drop the drive off with @olePigeon to test it like for like to check whether it's the drive or not.

Curiously, 230MB and 640MB discs work just fine.

 

[Daniël]

Managed to grab another 640MB SCSI drive for 25 euros + shipping, interestingly this is from a Dutch classifieds site, but this drive has clearly been imported:

The enclosure is 100V only, and it comes with a voltage stepdown converter of some kind, but I'll likely "shuck" the enclosure for its drive, to go into another one of my Macs in place of the floppy drive.

 

[micheledipaola]

Hello everybody, I am fighting with a Sony SMO - F541 drive in an external SCSI enclosure: the drive is seen in the SCSI chain on my 7.1.1 IIfx (with the proper "black terminator"), but it seems to be unsupported: I tried all the software mentioned here in the thread to format some 2.6Gb disks with no result.

I ordered a new enclosure which is on its way, just to be sure, but I was wondering if meanwhile someone could share experiences with that drive.

Just to mention it, I have a couple SyQuests (44mb and 88mb) in external enclosures and they work flawlessly on the same machine.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Hello everybody, I am fighting with a Sony SMO - F541 drive in an external SCSI enclosure: the drive is seen in the SCSI chain on my 7.1.1 IIfx (with the proper "black terminator"), but it seems to be unsupported: I tried all the software mentioned here in the thread to format some 2.6Gb disks with no result.

I ordered a new enclosure which is on its way, just to be sure, but I was wondering if meanwhile someone could share experiences with that drive.

Just to mention it, I have a couple SyQuests (44mb and 88mb) in external enclosures and they work flawlessly on the same machine.

Just to confirm, you tried Software Architect’s Disk Drive Tuneup 3.14 to format the disk?

 

[Daniël]

I tried all the software mentioned here in the thread to format some 2.6Gb disks with no result.

7.1.1's HFS partition size limit is 2GB, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you're running into issues related to that. Do you have a newer Mac with SCSI (preferably PPC), to try it on a newer Mac OS version?

 

[micheledipaola]

7.1.1's HFS partition size limit is 2GB, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you're running into issues related to that. Do you have a newer Mac with SCSI (preferably PPC), to try it on a newer Mac OS version?

these disks are double sided, so the max size is 1.3gb per side... it should be within limits, but I am installing 7.5 to give it a try anyway.

 

[micheledipaola]

Just to confirm, you tried Software Architect’s Disk Drive Tuneup 3.14 to format the disk?

I will check the software version but I am quite sure I did and it said the drive is unsupported. I will let you know anyway.

 

[micheledipaola]

Meanwhile I took the drive out of the enclosure and I am noticing two sets of dip switches at the end of it... everything was set ON and I couldn't find a manual online - I found the f551 manual which has its own switch infos and I am thinking about trying to fiddle a bit with them, but I am not so sure this will bring me anywhere...

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Meanwhile I took the drive out of the enclosure and I am noticing two sets of dip switches at the end of it... everything was set ON and I couldn't find a manual online - I found the f551 manual which has its own switch infos and I am thinking about trying to fiddle a bit with them, but I am not so sure this will bring me anywhere...

One set of switches will determine if the device is seen as an optical device, or not. The manual for the 541 and 551 should have the same dip switch settings.

 

[micheledipaola]

One set of switches will determine if the device is seen as an optical device, or not. The manual for the 541 and 551 should have the same dip switch settings.

this is from the SMO F551 manual:



any hint? thanks

 

[MrFahrenheit]

this is from the SMO F551 manual:


View attachment 67323
any hint? thanks

All switches should be in the "off" position (0, not 1).

 

[micheledipaola]

I will check the software version but I am quite sure I did and it said the drive is unsupported. I will let you know anyway.

After a more detailed check, here are the results with several formatters:
Fujitsu MO Formatter: says device cannot be handled
Pinnacle Formatter: does not recognize the device as removable MO
TuneUp v. 2.06 (with its extension installed): does recognize the device but waits for media even if the disk is inserted
TuneUp v. 3.14 (with extension installed) : freezes the Mac while scanning for devices.

All switches should be in the "off" position (0, not 1).

I had a better look and cleaned up the switch block a bit, and they were indeed all OFF, even if the off position on these is up and not down as in the 551 manual... cleaning up I could see the ON mark on the other side of the switch block.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

After a more detailed check, here are the results with several formatters:
Fujitsu MO Formatter: says device cannot be handled
Pinnacle Formatter: does not recognize the device as removable MO
TuneUp v. 2.06 (with its extension installed): does recognize the device but waits for media even if the disk is inserted
TuneUp v. 3.14 (with extension installed) : freezes the Mac while scanning for devices.



I had a better look and cleaned up the switch block a bit, and they were indeed all OFF, even if the off position on these is up and not down as in the 551 manual... cleaning up I could see the ON mark on the other side of the switch block.

Are you properly terminated ?

 

[micheledipaola]

Are you properly terminated ?

yes black terminator for IIfx is plugged to the second plug of the scsi box with the MO drive.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Try the Disk Drive TuneUp 3.14 software on the machine without any disk in the drive, does it still freeze when scanning devices ?

What about on boot with extension installed? Does it recognize and load a driver for the MO drive or does it indicate a red “no” for it?