new to SCSI external drives

[CharlieFrown]

Hi there, 

some of my latest purchases came with 1980s/early 90s SCSI external drives (CMS 80 MB and branded 40 MB one cant remember the maker). However when I attach them to my Plus with running 6.0.8 from the floppy, none of them appear in Finder (I power on hdd before starting my Mac). I can hear drive spinning just fine. Do I need terminator when I just want to see the content of these drives? What should be SCSI id? 

 

[bibilit]

You do need a terminator on the external drive and SCSI Id should be from 1 to 6.

Also, if the drive is not Apple approved, you will probably need to use a patched version of Apple HD SC to get it going.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

If connecting to a Mac Plus with no internal hard drive (it doesn't officially have the space or wiring for an internal hard drive, so almost guaranteed yours doesn't,) then you do need a terminator; but missing one shouldn't cause it to completely fail.

Any SCSI ID other than 7 should work fine, as it is the only SCSI device connected, and the SCSI controller in the computer uses ID 7.

In all likelihood, the drives are probably dead - of my 20-80 MB hard drives from that era, only about 5% are still working.  Your best bet would be to use a "SCSI Probe" utility to see if the drive even 'announces' itself to the OS.

 

[CharlieFrown]

wow, thanks a million, guys! Adding terminator definitely helped.. now it's working perfectly, luckily there's no bad sectors on EUROPA 40 hard disk. The last file was created in 95 or 96, since then it was sitting in closet. Need to try the second (CMS) drive, but need to find 25 pin terminator first. 

 

[just.in.time]

If you have the right cables, you should be able to connect like this: Plus -> CMS drive -> Europa40 -> terminator.  Set CMS and Europa drives to unique SCSI id's, with neither at ID 7 as was mentioned above.  In theory, they should both be able to work at the same time and both appear on the desktop if they are in working condition.  This would be one method of getting around finding a 25 pin terminator.