SE/30 booting off CF success

[duxbridge]

Thanks for trying to help me Bunsen, I appreciate it!

The CF card I am using is a Transcend Industrial CF150 4Gb, according the company's website, has true IDE mode and Ultra DMA Mode. I switched the jumper setting on the I-O Data SCSI to IDE adapter from PIO to UDMA mode as per Jumper Settings Reference. But still it is not read by the system. :?:

I have the jumper settings as follows:

Pin 1 Y (SCSI ID)

Pin 2 N (SCSI ID)

Pin 3 N (SCSI ID)

Pin 4 Y (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 5 Y (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 6 N (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 7 Y (DMA ATA Transfer Mode)

Pin 8 N (Flash ROM)

Pin 9 N (Internal SCSI Termination)

 

[Udo.Keller]

What I meann by the OS does not recognise the CF is that it does even show up on the screen nor does it show up when I scan the SCSI bus for it, it's like it's not there, I've tried to troubleshoot using the different SCSI IDs, but to no avail, it's like it can't find the CF! :?:

Maybe you can try connecting a PATA disk to the IDE-SCSI bridge instead of a CF card. If it works O.K., then we know the IDE-SCSI bridge is alright and we can focus on the CF card.

 

[duxbridge]

Just a quick update of my progress on my SE/30 CF journey for those that are following this thread. :beige: :b&w:

I disconnected the internal HDD of my SE/30(A) (that is known to be readable and bootable) and mounted as an external drive on the SE/30( B) SCSI bus, but it still does not read it.

The problem is either with:

• 1) SCSI termination (the HDD does not have built in termination)
  2) SCSI DB-25 and 50-Pin connector (though they are just cables and adapters, what could go wrong?)
  

Try and buy terminating resistors? Try and buy this dual drive internal SCSI cable?

 

[Udo.Keller]

I disconnected the internal HDD of my SE/30(A) (that is known to be readable and bootable) and mounted as an external drive on the SE/30( B) SCSI bus, but it still does not read it.

What happens if you take the internal HDD of your SE/30(A) (that is known to be readable and bootable) and install it in SE/30( B) internally?

 

[Bunsen]

I disconnected the internal HDD of my SE/30(A) and mounted as an external drive on the SE/30( B) SCSI bus, but it still does not read it.

Did you change the SCSI ID of the (A) drive? If both it and the internal ( B) drive are on the same ID, they will clash.

Have you tried:

Different SCSI external cables.

Different SCSI external cases.

Checking that the rear SCSI plug on the SE/30 is firmly attached to the motherboard SCSI connector?

 

[Bunsen]

8GB Seagate branded Micro-Drive / PCMCIA adapter / PowerBook G3 Wallstreet PDQ. I can select it as a boot drive using Startup Disk, but my Wallstreet won't boot from it at all. Perhaps this relates to what Bunsen was saying?

I doubt it; a Microdrive should behave exactly as any other platter drive. Have you tried it on the internal ATA or external SCSI bus? Do we know that the Wallstreet can boot from PCMCIA at all?

 

[JDW]

Have you tried it on the internal ATA or external SCSI bus?

No. But if you can tell me HOW to accomplish that, I will certainly give it a try. (Microdrives are the size of CF cards. The only way I can get it to work in my PC Card slot is because I have a CF to PCMCIA adapter. And the only reason I had that adapter was because I once used CF cards with my Newton 2100.)

Do we know that the Wallstreet can boot from PCMCIA at all?

Well, that was yet another reason why I posted what I did -- in hopes someone might be able to answer that question for me! But based upon my inability to boot from the Microdrive while in the PC card slot of the Wallstreet, I must assume the answer is "no." I'd like to be proven wrong though!

 

[Bunsen]

HOW to accomplish that

Uh, with a 2.5" IDE to CF adapter? They're cheap.

For external SCSI, add to that a SCSI-IDE adapter, or alternatively a SCSI-PCMCIA card reader/adapter.

 

[napabar]

You can absolutely boot a WallStreet from the PCMCIA adpater! I do it all the time!

Any of you that have watched my Mac 512K videos know that I'm using a WallStreet as my bridge machine. It boots up from a 8 Gig CF card in a 16-bit PCMCIA adapter. Works just fine, and is slightly faster that the old internal Hard Drive was. In fact, I removed the internal drive, and my WallStreet is silent!

I've wanted to get a 32-bit CardBus adpater (which Wall Street was the first to support), which should speed things up considerably. The 16-bit PCMCIA adpater is nothing more than a "Slug".

 

[JDW]

You can absolutely boot a WallStreet from the PCMCIA adpater! I do it all the time!

I would like to know more specifics of how you are accomplishing that. Because as I said in my previous post in this thread, using an 8GB Seagate Microdrive via PCMCIA card adapter does NOT work to boot my Wallstreet. Perhaps it was just in how it must be formatted? Because like I said, I can format my MicroDrive and install OS 9 on it AND I can see it in the Startup Disk control panel, but upon restart my Wallstreet refuses to boot off the MicroDrive and instead boots off the internal ATA hard drive.

 

[napabar]

JDW,

I didn't do anything special to accomplish this. Just slapped the 8 Gig CF card into the slug, and inserted it into the PowerBook. I partitioned it with Drive Setup. I think I've used both 8.6 and 9.1 version of the tool.

If you're having issues booting from the PCMCIA slot, I would first try zapping the PRAM, then deleting the startup disk preference file.

 

[duxbridge]

Hi guys, I finally got FWB Harddisk tools to start a low level format on my CF card, but it says that the process will take 254 minutes! Is this normal?

 

[Byrd]

Probably is - low level formatting takes an age, especially for larger volumes on a slower SCSI bus

 

[duxbridge]

For those that have been following this thread know that I've been attempting to boot my pigeon pair of SE/30s from CF for a while now. I'm pleased to report that I've successfully done so. :beige: :b&w:

I decided to put together my experience so that others can try it themselves.

Hardware

• CF card Transcend Industrial CF150 4Gb (Details here)
  
• I-O DATA R-IDSC SCSI to IDE adapter (this is the most important component of the entire project), I'm indebted to the Rob Braun who wrote some very useful material on this subject, you will find his pages linked here and here.
  
• You also need a IDE to CF adapter, anything will do, I got mine from eBay for $2 and a Molex power Y-splitter.

The jumper settings on the SCSI to IDE adapter are:

Pin 1 Y (SCSI ID 1)

Pin 2 N (SCSI ID)

Pin 3 N (SCSI ID)

Pin 4 Y (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 5 Y (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 6 N (SCSI-1 Mode)

Pin 7 Y (DMA ATA Transfer Mode)

Pin 8 N (Flash ROM)

Pin 9 N (Internal SCSI Termination)

More detail of the jumper settings can be found here.

The CF-SSD when all setup looks like this:

Mounting the CF-SCSI Drive

You need a Mac that can run Mac OS 7, 8 or 9 with a CD-ROM drive containing the software listed below, (you can use floppies, I didn't, because I don't own any). Other people have used an external SCSI drive like Syquest or Apple SC to format their CF cards but I could not find one so I used a Power Macintosh 7200/120 instead!

Software

• StuffIt (to unstuff the files)
  
• Disk copy 6 (to create and open disk images)
  
• Harddisk formatting software, I used FWB Harddisk toolkit 1.6, others have successfully used Patched Apple Tools and Rob Braun recommends Lido 7.

Tips

• Formatting the drive can take a while, especially if your CF card is large
  
• I partitioned the formatted CF card into 4 equal partitions, the first partition is the one your Mac will read by default.
  
• Don't use Mac OS X to format your CF card.

Finally, here is a screenshot from my Macintosh SE/30 with the 4 CF-SSD Volumes:

 

[JDW]

duxbridge, when you have time I'd love to see some benchmarks!

 

[bbraun]

If we can get 1700kb/s READ and 1700kb/s WRITE with a spinning platter drive on an SE/30 that has that slow SCSI chip, can one then argue that "it's the SCSI chip!" when a CF card gets 1700kb/s READ but only 500kb/s WRITE?

Can you provide a reference to a 1700kb/s write drive for an SE/30, and what write test it's able to hit that with? I've tried 10k and 15k RPM SCSI disks, and in my experience, they range from ~300kb/s at 1kb writes to ~1200kb/s at 256kb writes on the SE/30, with the same disk in a G4 with a PCI SCSI card gets ~1700kb/s at 1kb writes up to ~3500kb/s at 256kb writes.

 

[JDW]

Can you provide a reference to a 1700kb/s write drive for an SE/30, and what write test it's able to hit that with?

Yes, earlier in this thread:

viewtopic.php?p=162755#p162755

viewtopic.php?p=162139#p162139

 

[bbraun]

Those two links are 1700kb/s read, unless I'm misunderstanding.

 

[JDW]

Those two links are 1700kb/s read, unless I'm misunderstanding.

Sorry about that. I wasn't thinking clearly. And thank you for point that out.

I just now ran QuickBench 2.0 (part of Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools 3.6) on my SE/30 (with a 50MHz DiiMO accelerator installed), under OS 7.5.5:

I tested the following hard drive mechanism, mounted inside an Apple Hard Disk 20SC SCSI enclosure:




Reads are faster than Writes, as you can see. WRITES peaked at 1.4MB/s while READS peacked at nearly 1.8MB/s. I ran the same benchmark 3 times and the results were largely the same each time.

(By the way, for those of you using QuickBench, I highly recommend the Numerical View on the SE/30, since if you do the Line graph, you cannot see the colors and no one has any idea what the lines mean.)

 

[tt]

I am now trying to optimize my CF card as well using an AztecMonster. It seems like the biggest variable in upping the performance when I am installing the drivers is to enable or disable "blind writes". If blind writes are enabled, performance goes up to the SE/30's max capability for reads, but writes become unstable. If blind writes are disabled, read performance goes down to ~600kB/s speeds and writes even lower. I am using a disk utility called CharisMac Anubis Plus.

Anyone have ideas here on how to get better stability with blind writes enabled?