Centris 650 and SCSI2SD V5.1 query

[nightmare0331]

Hi All

First time post with an odd (?) question.

I recently pulled a Centris 650 I've had for years out of storage.  In itself nothing major...I bought it used off of Ebay in the 2001ish time frame and would periodically pull it out essentially to play Pathways Into Darkness.

The SCSI 230meg drive still works but periodically has issues starting, so after doing a bunch of reading, ordered up a SCSI2SD V5.1 card for it yesterday.

My question is...is it possible to copy the entire hard drive including operating system over to the flash drive?  I have zero system or software disks for this machine.  Sure, I'm aware that the operating system is downloadable but I'm not sure how I would get it from a newer PC to this mac (no CD drive)

I'm just figuring out the best way to take a stab at this problem...I understand a clean install would probably be preferable, but I'm actually trying to avoid that since I would have to source everything again.  

Thanks! 

 

[jupo]

It is possible, if you can get the drive formatted - and that will depend upon whether you have HD setup or drive setup somewhere on your existing HD.

Physically, you should have a spare spot on the SCSI ribbon cable to hook it up where the internal CD would go. You'll also need an understanding of how SCSI bus termination works.

If you can get it to the point it is initialized and showing up on the desktop screen as another Mac volume, you can just drag and copy everything from the old drive to the SCSI2SD drive and it should be ready to go. I just did the same on my 575 with a second mechanical drive.

If you don't have HD setup on your current hard drive, you'll have to either get it networked (PDS slot ethernet?) or make 1.4MB floppies on another computer to shuffle files over (I haven't had to do this from a PC since the late 90s so I don't recall specifics).

 

[nightmare0331]

gotcha.  There is a second spot on the scsi cable where the CD rom should go....that's what I was thinking of plugging the SCSI2SD into.

So basically *IF* I can get the flash drive to show up, I should *theoretically* be able to just drag and drop the entire hard disk drive to the new drive.

I'll have to check to see if that utility is on the machine I have....if I don't I'll have to think up something creative.

Thanks! 

 

[jupo]

That's right. The trick will be getting it partitioned/formatted for the Mac, which becomes much harder if you don't have Apple's utility available.

Come to think of it, prepping the drive might even be possible with fancy tricks using an emulator on a PC, but since I don't have a SCSI2SD it's not anything I can even pretend to know about. I think I remember seeing a thread on the forum that discussed setting up cards using other systems.

 

[MacFox]

I recommend checking out this thread in our Peripherals section:

 

[jessenator]

I think v5.1 and later has automatic termination so that shouldn't be a problem in a plug n play type of scenario, as long as th device ID isn't set to 0 or 7. Once the old drives content is copied over and old drive removed, you can use the utility again to set the ID to 0 (internal, master startup drive)

Yes, that thread in peripherals is gold!

Once you get the adapter itself set-up with the SCSI2SD utility, the biggest hurdle will be the actual formatting program—getting it onto your Centris' drive. If you have a way to write 1.4M Macintosh floppies, I'd recommend Lido () (a drive partitioning program mentioned further on in that thread just not in the initial tutorial) available from the Macintosh garden website. No patching required.

My "bridge" machine has been an iBook G3 with a USB floppy drive capable of writing mac floppies. Should work on macs that run up to OS X 10.5.

 

[Cory5412]

The thing I did with a SCSI2SD on my (admittedly, much newer) Power Mac 8600 was boot a Mac OS 7/8/9 install CD, then pop in a Zip 100 cartridge with Silverlining v6.1 on it.

There is a way to configure the SCSI2SD to make it present to the Mac as if it is an Apple firmware device. You may be able to replicate this by making a System 7.1 boot diskette and putting a copy of Silverlining or another partitioning tool on the boot floppy. Contemporary versions to the machine and OS are reasonably likely to fit on a floppy. I got my copy off of the Macintosh Garden.

If you have a network server sharing an AppleShare volume to either AppleTalk or Ethernet, you could also use a 7.5 Network Access Disk to access any programs you need.

One other possibility, depending on how much stuff there is on the machine and what your Internet connection is like and what software is currently on it, if you'd like, I can build you an account on vtools, which will let you save a copy of the machine's disk to a disk image on the server, then you can boot from (I need to test this myself to make it work so I can't 100% guarantee this yet) a Mac OS 8.0 or 7.1 CD with your SCSI2SD connected in place of the old hard disk, partition it with Silverlining (or another preferred tool) and copy the contents of the disk image back to the new volume(s) on your SCSI2SD.

What OS do you have on the 650 and/or what are you planning to run on it? I also have CD images of 7.6.1 and 8.1 that can be burned on a PC or a modern Mac which *fingers-crossed* should read in a 650 if you put them on a plain CD-R. (the drive in my 840 can boot from a 7.6.1 CD-R I have.)