A MegaDrive Disk Pack? 210MB hotswap SCSI drive from 1990!

[olePigeon]

Found this little gem at the computer recycler. It's a Mega Drive Disk Pack. I couldn't find any information on it on Google, other than it was made between 1990-1993. It instantly got my attention, and I new it was vintage for 3 reasons: 1, it's a trapezoid (I haven't seen that since the Commodore PET); 2, all the plastic bits are yellowed; and 3, it has "Made in the USA" on it.

I found the main drive part, and with some rummaging, managed to find a disk cartridge! The drive in the cartridge was bad. It had a 1/2 height Conner SCSI drive inside it. I'm planning on putting a good SCSI drive in once I find one that's compatible. The SCSI ID block is a little too big and wouldn't stay connected on my Apple 240MB drive.

The cartridge itself is very Macintosh-like, with the line grooves on it. Wouldn't surprise me if this little device was sold as a Macintosh peripheral, especially since it's SCSI.

I powered it up and it appears to work, except for the bad SCSI drive. Can't wait to fix it up. The housing is in great condition, just a couple chips on the back and that's it. Just needs a little elbow grease and some Retr0Bright.

 

[dorkbert]

If I may make a suggestion, since you're looking for replacement drive, it may be helpful if you post the jumper block in question so people know what drives with that jumper size you need.

 

[olePigeon]

I'll see if I can do that, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Brett B.]

That is very cool. What physical size hard drive does it have? I am guessing smaller than a standard 3.5"? Whatever you end up using, I'd suggest staying away from Conner drives...they were not very reliable in my experience. Then again what 20+ year old drive is going to be "reliable" anyway.

You should maybe consider getting a SCSI->Compact Flash adapter and a large card. That would be pretty cool.