ROMinator II Pickle of an issue

[sleestack808]

Everything was fine. Until I plugged in a Syquest Power User HD. With an unformatted disk. 
Now, the Se/30 boots only to Romdisk.  Doesn’t matter if I push A or R.  I open that program sci probe, and its blinking a message “bus not terminated” "scsi probe 3.3”..

Im guessing the disk wasn’t unmouned properly?

No hard drive. Nothing. There is something wrong and its that dumb Syquest drive. I think. HELP

 

[Cory5412]

It appears that there's an error message saying the bus isn't terminated, it's probably because the bus isn't terminated. Have you got a terminator on your SCSI drive? If no, and your case won't do it for you (some later APS cases had built-in termination), you might need to get one.

 

[olePigeon]

SCSI drives need a terminator if they're not self-terminating.  You may have to buy one on eBay.  If they're not properly terminated, it can cause all sorts of issues.

I know that on my IIci at home I had to add an in-line passive terminator in addition to terminating the end of the chain.  I guess there was too much noise.  Without the terminator, my Mac wouldn't see some of my devices (or at worst, it might crash.)

 

[trag]

Both ends of the SCSI chain should be terminated.  So in theory you need two terminators.  On most Macs, either the logic board of the internal hard drive takes care of the termination at one end, and it's up to the user to terminate whatever is at the far external end.   However, the Mac Plus has neither internal hard drive, nor termination on its logic board, so in order for there to be any termination at all, a single external device must have termination, either in the form of internal termination or an external terminator on the cable.

 

[sleestack808]

My god. Im in over my head. I have to buy a terminator? I bought a power user Syquest drive. It looks like there might be two tiny buttons on the front. Maybe they terminate?

How would I go about doing this? in other words. How do I retrace my steps so the termination works? Also, Should I format the cartridge on my G4 before I get into this? 

Thanks

 

[dcr]

I've never had a PowerUser SyQuest drive, but the other SyQuest drives I used did not have built-in termination.  We used a terminator that simply connected to one of the SCSI connectors on the back of the drive.

It was something like this: 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ACTIVE-SCSI-TERMINATOR-50-PIN-CENTRONICS-MALE-SCSI-1-TERMINATOR-ACTIVE-50-PIN/282477893471

 

[sleestack808]

I see. ok, thanks

 

[ArmorAlley]

My god. Im in over my head. I have to buy a terminator? I bought a power user Syquest drive. It looks like there might be two tiny buttons on the front. Maybe they terminate?

How would I go about doing this? in other words. How do I retrace my steps so the termination works? Also, Should I format the cartridge on my G4 before I get into this? 

Thanks

View attachment 27724

If you don't mind the postage from Switzerland, I've a terminator for a 50-pin Centronics port I can give you (for the cost of postage). You'd need to show me the back of the drive though to check that it's for the right port.

PM me if you are interested. Otherwise, you ae sure to find one on eBay, in a local Goodwill etc.

 

[sleestack808]

Yeah, I just got two on amazon. Thanks!

 

[ArmorAlley]

Super. Good to hear that.

 

[trag]

If you plan to make the SCSI chain longer (add additional external devices) then on a Mac Plus, because of the lack of internal termination, the proper thing to do is to use a Pass-through terminator on one of the connectors of the first device (closest to the Plus), and use a normal terminator on the device at the end  of the chain.

Each device will have two connectors.   One for the upstream (towards Mac) cable and one for the downstream (away from Mac) cable.   On the final device, there's no need for a downstream cable, so that's where the terminator goes.

However, on the first device both connectors are used, so there's no way to install a normal terminator.  Hence a Pass-through terminator is needed.

Notice connectors of opposite gender on each end of terminator:

Also, in my previous post, this sentence fragment: 

" On most Macs, either the logic board of the internal hard drive takes care of the termination at one end "    

should have read:

" On most Macs, either the logic board or the internal hard drive takes care of the termination at one end "

 

[Cory5412]

Closing this thread. Please continue any discussion related to this issue in this new thread: