androda

Maybe the scsi2sd PowerBook edition had some parts go out of production or something like that. It's also possible a new version is on the way but I don't see much indication of that. So maybe the bluescsi is basically "it" for now. I'm planning to keep the V2 of my powerbook design in stock until I come up with a better one.

Yep. I haven't done a ton of searching (because, you know, I make the things), but bluescsi and the scsi2sd may be the only two SD style solutions that are available for internal use in a PowerBook.

Have you done any benchmarking of your original drive or looked into the speed of the various scsi device emulators that could fit? Would be interesting to run the benchmark on your original drive and do the same on a bluescsi to see the difference. Seek times are practically non-existent because SD storage is solid state. This gives the bluescsi a lead on anything dealing with lots of tiny files. Larger file sizes will be where the lower speed comes into play.

The BlueSCSI is not as fast as an original hard drive, with read and write speeds ranging around 900k per second. But as @Daniël Oosterhuis says, it's extremely easy to use. Stick a hard drive image file on your microSD card, name it properly, and it's there. No configuration utility is necessary, it's all based around the image file names. exFAT seems to provide better performance than FAT32 (speaking of SD card format). There's a listing for PowerBook style BlueSCSI drives in the trading post right now (note that this is my listing), still in stock.

Tested the updated PowerBook design on a 540 and 520 w/ppc upgrade (my brother's laptops). They booted just fine on the rascsi 7.5.3 image. Will be posting the new design in my repo later today. This morning I finished assembling 8 of the updated design, and will soon be making a trading post thread to list them for sale. No sales website yet, that's another thing I need to do (and I'm pretty bad at web stuff).

Thanks for the pointer. Makes me wonder how much longer the 2218 will be manufactured. How many brand new SCSI devices are being made these days, with everything being SATA and SAS?

Thanks for the compliment, but my design isn't technically correct yet. The resistors can't be removed from circuit, which might cause issues in mid-bus usage even with termpower disabled. It's more suited for end of bus where termination is required. The next board revision will include some sort of bus switch for connect/disconnect of the term resistors. Termination resistors don't have to be teeny-tiny. You can use physically larger 110 ohm resistors, the normal through-hole style. I've found that these little things are actually pretty easy with a solder paste syringe and

Speaking of PCB designs, here's the prototype version of my PowerBook BlueSCSI device board. This is the repo where my designs will go after they've had some basic testing done. 'USB Here' means the end of the blue pill with the USB port goes there. https://github.com/androda/PCBDesigns/tree/main/BlueSCSI/PowerBook The two jumpers are for selecting which power source you use (L = logic, M = motor) and term power. I have found that it doesn't work at all without termination enabled in my PowerBook 180. Sleep mode is not tested, unsure if it'll work. This board is definitel

Yes, I've spent some time on this. While I was replacing the capacitors on a backlit portable I managed to find the time to buzz out a bunch of the backlit's hybrid replacement. The results are documented here: https://68kmla.org/forums/topic/62148-new-hybrids-for-the-macintosh-portable-m5120/?do=findComment&comment=666493 That board has gone back to its owner (working, yay) and since I don't own one myself the effort has stalled for the moment. @techknight has offered to sell me some of his old parted out backlit boards to continue the effort, so I can get back to it after

That code looks to indicate a RAM test failure. FF is a reference to which RAM bits failed. I think it means all bits from 0 through 7 failed. Seems likely that you have damage to the RAM chip area, or at least a disconnect for those specific bits. So basically you would need to check bits 0 through 7 using the schematic, and verify that they have a good connection to all the places they should go.

Glad you got this running at least. Have you verified the 5V always on rail is actually 5 volts? And the 12 volt rail too? Display contrast is generated by the power manager chip, from pin 57 (see page 12 of portable schematic). I'm no expert on the display contrast side of things, but here's a list of possible issues: A communication break between the system and power manager (software or hardware) Check pin connections between the power manager and VIA chip, that's how the power manager talks to the rest of the system This isn't hugely likely

The portable is a bit of a mystery to me on whether it needs the bus terminated (my LC ii and iii didn't care, for example). My board design for the portable includes a jumper to turn termination on and off, and uses a diode between +5 and the 2.85 volt regulator to prevent backflow.

This is true. Still useful because the adapters are rare and expensive now. Trying to make new ADC male connectors using PCB and pins may encounter the same sort of issues that BMOW did with his DB19 adventure. Doesn't fit quite right, etc. I hope it can be figured out though.

Speaking of making powerbook and portable versions of the BlueSCSI/ardscsino, I just ordered a set of prototype PCBs for PB, portable, and desktop. If they end up working (which I certainly hope they do) I'll start producing them. Powerbook scsi drives only get more expensive over time, and mac portable scsi drives are even worse. These boards will use the scsi active termination standard that should be more efficient in terms of power usage (hopefully won't kill your PB battery as fast as the original drive ).

I searched around the internet for this sort of thing and didn't come up empty handed: https://lookanotherblog.com/diy-adc-adapter/ http://www.jasondoesitall.com/2013/05/files-for-oshpark/ I ordered a set of 5 of these pcbs for fun, curious to see how they turn out.

Those yellow capacitors are tantalum, often called 'tag' style or 'dipped' because they are literally assembled and then dipped into the yellow coating. These types in particular are known to combust, it's happened to me twice in the past. As they age, they become less stable and voltage fluctuations from the similarly aging power supplies can make them go boom. Can you post the numbers from the capacitor next to the one that exploded? I would guess they are the same capacitor, or very similar.

@LaPorta I've checked a few sites (digikey, mouser) and looked at the datasheet you posted. As far as I can tell, the Wurth 875105344006 is a solid polymer capacitor and not a hybrid. Edit: Sorry for the ping, apparently my browser decided not to refresh properly and I missed everyone else's responses.

http://myoldmac.net/FAQ/SADerror-portable.htm $0A00 is listed as being an F-Line exception from the 68000. I can't find any other reference for $0A in sad mac codes. https://community.nxp.com/t5/ColdFire-68K-Microcontrollers/Line-1010-Emulator-Unimplemented-A-Line-Opcode/m-p/140164/highlight/true#M2288 The CPU is receiving an instruction that should be executed by an FPU, which the mac portable doesn't have. But that's not the whole problem, because normally a system without FPU patches out the address of the F-Line handler to point at the software FPU. Even without a

There's someone selling an adapter on eBay which converts portable scsi connector to standard 50 pin. But it's kind of expensive just for a pin adapter, about $50. The pin out to convert to standard scsi is available on the forum here. Can make your own cable. Maybe I should make a custom ardscsino/bluescsi pcb just for the mac portable's funny internal bus connector. Not a huge market, but better than using adapters.

Fantastic haul. So much good stuff in there. First and foremost, the pram batteries need to be removed from that Mac tower, the mac II stack, and the portable should have the 9v battery removed. Those are most prone to leaking and causing serious damage. If you want to preserve the Macs, they will need work to replace capacitors. If you have questions about capacitor replacement or whatever, feel free to direct message me.

As a next step to my suggestion about reusing the backlit portable's non-hybrid setup, I spent an hour or two tracing it out and recreating in kicad. This comes from a backlit portable which I just recently replaced capacitors on. Quite happily, it works fine now. Here's a picture from my kicad work. Note that U1M and U5L have totally the wrong symbols and look like resistor packs. I'm pretty new to kicad and couldn't find better symbols for them. Also, I'm totally unsure what the values of these resistor packs are. Looking up their numbers didn't help. Measured one in circu

Cool find of the week: a nice set of Newtons. 130, Apple 2000 (upgraded to 2100), and Newton Technology 2100. Includes one rechargeable battery (not likely to work), the AA battery cage, windows Beta version of the newton connection tools, original box for the 2000, some carrying cases, and some of the original purchase documentation. No serial adapters for the 2x00s, so I'll have to figure that out. Not pictured are the five linear flash storage cards that these came with, one original Apple and the rest are third party. Previous owner totally maxed these out, every PCMCIA slot has a fla

The repo I know of with information on the hybrid is here. Might be the one you're thinking of. https://github.com/ppieczul/macintosh-portable Makes me wonder whether the backlit portable's system could be reverse engineered and used instead. Obviously we lack the schematic on the backlit portable so we can't immediately see what differences there are in the rest of the regulator circuit. Seems like Apple wouldn't have much incentive to rework the whole power distribution system: only that which was necessary to get rid of the hybrid. I'm pretty sure that my friend w