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Using Modern Hard Drives on Old Macs?

uniserver

Well-known member
yes the scsi internal zip drive 100 works great in the 512k /w plus rom's

By the way when it boots up 7.1 ATM says that its a Macintosh Plus.

Also i have tried with and w/o the TPR jumper when i was testing the 2.5" 10k hd. no dice, strange.

 

uniserver

Well-known member
Yup.

Hey man this things is pretty sweet no doubt … its right up my ally, with these 2 add on boards, Ram/SCSI it's almost like there is 2 motherboards in there.

I'm thinking about pulling the zip drive out and installing an 80mb IBM drive from the LC.

 

techknight

Well-known member
Well, put the zip drive in your plus, and hook the U320 drive up at the same time on the same cable, use the Zip drive for termination power and termination itself.

 

CC_333

Well-known member
yes the scsi internal zip drive 100 works great in the 512k /w plus rom's
Your 512k has a SCSI upgrade?
By the way when it boots up 7.1 ATM says that its a Macintosh Plus.
If it does, it must have a RAM upgrade also, because the 512k generally can't run System 7.x (presumably because there's not enough RAM).
c

 

uniserver

Well-known member
yes this is an INSANELY upgraded 512k. lol

It Has:

- Dove Mac Snap, SCSI, External and Custom Internal 50 pin connector.

- MacSnap - 2mb Memory upgrade. 2.5meg ram total!

Not gonna lie this thing excites me a little :)

I put 6.0.8 on it, had to remove the EYES extension. it was making my app's run jerky.

I could put 7.1 back on it. I found out it was the EYES extension causing my odd slowness issues.

 

CC_333

Well-known member
:cool:

I'll probably be keeping my 512k (when I get it) stock, except for a 512ke board upgrade (so it can be slightly more usable, while still being basically an original stock configuration.)

c

 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
Its too bad these 2.5" drives won't fit in a Powerbook due to complete lack of room. Not to mention the potential heat problems!

 

James1095

Well-known member
Its too bad these 2.5" drives won't fit in a Powerbook due to complete lack of room. Not to mention the potential heat problems!
They seem to run quite cool, although I don't know how they are in terms of power consumption. They certainly use more power than modern 2.5" laptop drives, but old drives tend to use more than newer drives so they might turn out to be similar.

Has anyone measured the actual fit? Perhaps removing the SCA connector and soldering a cable directly to the board would work?

 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
I had the Powerbook 165 apart, the SCA connector likely sticks out enough to hit the trackball assembly. Even if it was flush with the drive, any adapter would stick out in the same space. you'd have to somehow wire it directly into the ribbon cable that is there.

 

uniserver

Well-known member
that is an interesting idea :)

Do you have the ability to try this. Man it would be exciting as hell to see a PB170 fire up with one of these in it!

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.06.23 PM.png

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.05.24 PM.png

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.06.03 PM.png

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Trackpad upgrade?
Gods, I hope not. The trackball was a superior pointing device until... well, when did the magic trackpad come out? Wasn't until the glass trackpad from Apple did they finally become useable, in my opinion.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
I'd need an SCA drive, but looking at that, I'm pretty sure it intrudes into the space taken up by the trackball.... at least in the Powerbook 100 series. That and I'm pretty sure they don't make SCA to 2.5" 40pin SCSI adapters. :cool:
Oof. That'd be a tight fit, even if you made your own adapter. Looking at the profile view of the HDD, you might be able to make one that sits on top of the HDD if you use the same type of ribbon cable and flat connector.

 

James1095

Well-known member
Yeah that looks like it would be a heck of a tight fit. It could probably be done, but the thought of trying to solder all those connections makes me go cross-eyed and I'm fairly accustomed to hand soldering fine pitch SMT stuff.

 

uniserver

Well-known member
I guess the other concern is energy consumption.

Might be over budget for the ribbon cable. or regulator.

+ i still think they get way to hot, with out some kind of ventilation.

 

James1095

Well-known member
Well, measure the draw from one, and compare it to one of the original drives, that's the easiest way to find out.

Solid state option is probably the best modern replacement though, just not cheap.

 

techknight

Well-known member
Well those SCA drives use both 5 and 12v. PB drives only use 5v. so you need to tap 12V from somewhere. Also with the SCA connector removed, you only have to hook up maybe half of those connections. as your not using the full U320 bus.

 
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