Chopsticks Posted November 3, 2020 Report Share Posted November 3, 2020 16 hours ago, erichelgeson said: Working on that now - international shipping will be more of course - I just haven't shipped a lot internationally. Cost will be determined on how I can source all the parts - have a spread sheet and working on it now. This weekend I added a floppy power port (though seems to be some conflicting info on if the pitch is 2.54 or 2.5 - though both would probably work), added activity LED pin out, moved the debug port, re-worked the mounting, made the board 1mm wider to not cut off silk screen. Will be testing a few of the power options before actually placing the orders here on non-TERMPOWR macs (like the plus.) just wondering if you'd had a chance to check out the overclock option and if so what results you go and if you had any issues with reliability etc, mainly just curious tbh, had no issues myself during my short testing but who knows long term sort of thing.. also have you had a chance to test throughput of read and write using different sdcards yet? would be good to get some further results regarding transfer speeds beside what I posted the other day Quote Link to post Share on other sites
stormy Posted November 3, 2020 Report Share Posted November 3, 2020 You could call it the 'Scuzzuino' Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted November 10, 2020 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted November 10, 2020 Been AFK with work, home, etc, but plan to get a few of these todo's done this week and likely do one last prototype batch. I have sent out a few prototypes to people to get some feedback. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted November 16, 2020 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted November 16, 2020 I have LED, Berg power, and a few other minor updates done. Though have two questions before I put in the last prototype order: The floppy berg connector - I've seen conflicting #'s on the pitch - 2.5 and 2.54 - someone on discord measured his and it was 2.54 so I'm going with that. I'm having trouble finding the right diodes on Mouser - the ones I've found for through hole are all huge(physically) and rated very high (hence the size) - If someone could help find an appropriate diode I'd appreciate it! It seems when searching for components you can get the wrong filter and never find them, then someone else looks and finds one you never saw Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted December 21, 2020 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted December 21, 2020 A few quick updates: I have the 1.0-b rev tested and is the final rev. I'm sourcing BluePills now from but everyone seems to be low on stock or jacking up shipping right now. Have a few on order but have had orders cancelled. Supply chain woe's. On the software side I've rebased the software component on ztto's which added support for different block sizes as well as updated to SdFat 2.x. I've also added a log file and debugging info in case of issues. I've added instructions and details to my Github repo wiki. I've sent a few boards and have had a few people order their own all reporting success. ToDo: design a 3d printed mount for the rev-b - mounting hole changed. Current stock is have 3 BluePills & 10 boards (2x ztto-v2's, 4x rev-a's, 4x rev-b's). Not taking orders yet but will post soon how I want to divvy up these. Will likely make 3 fully assembled and provide the rest as kits (sans BluePills - which you can buy in low quantity on amazon for an ok price) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter androda Posted December 21, 2020 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted December 21, 2020 Very nice, I have been wondering on the status of ardscsino and forks. This seems like the best low-cost scsi replacement for older devices, where speed is less of a concern. Good work. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
warmech Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 Nice! Glad to see this is still marching along - I'd love to finally be able to replace all my dead or dying SCSI drives. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 13 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 13 Quick update - 25 bluepills arrived and are genuine - so I do have a supplier now, though they're a bit more expensive then I'd like, but that seems to be with everything from China right now. I'll have 60 blanks and 30 bluepills ready to ship kits or fully assembled next week (fingers crossed) & already have 15 spoken for. I have a 3D holder designed too that should fits nicely into compact macs or an external case. We'll see how fast the supply goes and I'll guesstimate another run. Will update again once the boards arrive. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
badCaps Posted January 14 Report Share Posted January 14 Cool! I'll take 1 assembled and 1 kit. If you are sharing the stl file I'll just print my own cases. Excited to try these out! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
wymtb Posted January 16 Report Share Posted January 16 First of all, thank you very much @erichelgeson! At the end of last year I ordered some PCBs from China and the other needed stuff from mouser and other suppliers. Seems to be very hard to receive genuine bluepills. Even the supplier that used to send genuine bluepills send me boards with CH32F103C8T6. Recognized this too late after it was already soldered. So keep a close look before soldering and you might also should try to get at least the code flashed in a first step. As I still had one genuine bluepill I soldered the next one. Flashing was done with a ST-LINK V2 China clone. But it seemed not to be working, also no logfile was written to SD. While digging around with the fake bluepill I changed the code to enable debug. And as far as I can see if debug is enabled the serial line must be connected. If not the device seems like it would not be working. Maybe writing to the logfile could be started a little bit earlier indicating that if debug in enabled the serial line has to be connected. Furthermore at least one harddisk image file has to be placed on the SD-Card. And the file probably has to be named correctly. I took a file I used in the past I wrote with dd to a SD-card for use with scsi2sd. I simply renamed it to HD00_512.HDS and copied over to the fat formatted SD-card. After I figured all this out bluescsi is working perfectly inside my Macintosh IIcx. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 16 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 16 Glad you got it working @wymtb! I've ran into the same thing and added most of those things to the documentation on the wiki page https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI/wiki If you have anything to add to it, please edit the wiki page! I actually tried to order a fake, but got a real one If someone would like to send me a CH32F103C* I could try to debug it. My kits/assembled ones will be pre-flashed so you wont have to worry about any of this. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
wymtb Posted January 16 Report Share Posted January 16 Should have taken a closer look into the wiki I was not able to flash the CH32F103C8T6 based bluepill from within the arduino ide. But I was able to flash the bin file using STM32 ST-LINK Utility on my Windows 10 laptop. And this device is working too. No idea if there might be any differences in the long run. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 18 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 18 (edited) Had a few hours today to poke at the software side and made a 38% improvement in read performance and 27% improvement in write. Max Read: 990KB/sec Max Write: 813KB/sec Avg Seek: 1.01ms An SE goes from Happy Mac to desktop in 5 seconds flat It verified ExFat support works, but no reason to use it really unless you need drives over 4gb. Note I did not test formatting a 4gb drive. The Mac Plus as we know has a few oddities with the SCSI spec - I could not get it to boot off of it, but hope to figure it out. Listed as unsupported right now. Added some various other logging and bumped to the latest SdFat. PCB blanks will be here on Friday - next weekend I should have the first batch flashed and ready to ship. Edited January 18 by erichelgeson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SuperSVGA Posted January 20 Report Share Posted January 20 On 1/17/2021 at 4:41 PM, erichelgeson said: The Mac Plus as we know has a few oddities with the SCSI spec - I could not get it to boot off of it, but hope to figure it out. Listed as unsupported right now. Have you tried disconnecting pin 40/A15? If that works it might be a unit attention issue. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 20 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 20 2 hours ago, SuperSVGA said: Have you tried disconnecting pin 40/A15? If that works it might be a unit attention issue. Have not, just starting to read up on the Plus - thanks for the tip! FYI got a bit more performance out of it today - 1012kb/sec read, 900kb/sec write Migrated the project to PlatformIO - so can do live debugging very easily. Boards came in early today too! I dont have shipping supplies the page up to order, but will be up this weekend - 68kmla discount code and all. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Andrew Posted January 21 Report Share Posted January 21 (edited) On 1/20/2021 at 2:51 AM, erichelgeson said: Have not, just starting to read up on the Plus - thanks for the tip! FYI got a bit more performance out of it today - 1012kb/sec read, 900kb/sec write Migrated the project to PlatformIO - so can do live debugging very easily. Boards came in early today too! I dont have shipping supplies the page up to order, but will be up this weekend - 68kmla discount code and all. Hello @erichelgeson. I am interested in purchasing a pre-assembled kit if one is available, and I am more than happy to help with the project such as trying out new firmware etc. Nice work, keep it up! Edited January 21 by Andrew Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stefano Baron Posted January 25 Report Share Posted January 25 On 1/19/2021 at 9:51 PM, erichelgeson said: Have not, just starting to read up on the Plus - thanks for the tip! FYI got a bit more performance out of it today - 1012kb/sec read, 900kb/sec write Migrated the project to PlatformIO - so can do live debugging very easily. Boards came in early today too! I dont have shipping supplies the page up to order, but will be up this weekend - 68kmla discount code and all. Hello! Wonderful project! Congratulations! I had an old Mac Plus modded with an internal SCSI hard drive soldering the SCSI cable wires directly on the NEC 5380 IC (SCSI Controler). This unit was sold long ago, but now I have another beautiful Mac 512k upgraded with the Plus logic board / back case and would like to enroll to buy a kit ou even a blank PCB and help fixing this Mac Plus issue. Another mod that could fix the issue and worth a try https://retroguy.blog/2020/01/14/booting-a-mac-plus-out-of-an-external-scsi2sd-card/ Best Regards! Stefano Baron Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 26 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 26 First batch is up for 68kmla'ers - after my "Friends and Family" round there's only a few left. Second batch should be ready next week I hope. https://gum.co/bluescsi-1b 5x$5 off with code 68kmla USA only shipping for now - discussing with someone who wants to build them in the EU, so stay tuned! If you don't want a kit or assembled but would like to chip in towards development you can do so here https://gum.co/EifeC Dev updates: Performance up to 1024kb/sec read now. Allow arbitrary names so you know whats on your images Allow for setting SCSI Vendor/Product/Version info via config files Plans: Daughter board for db25 and powerbook connections. BluePills are getting scarce and more fakes, looking at other dev boards to port to. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter cheesestraws Posted January 26 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 26 4 hours ago, erichelgeson said: USA only shipping for now - discussing with someone who wants to build them in the EU, so stay tuned! I'm all agog, transatlantically speaking.... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter BacioiuC Posted January 26 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 26 Looking forward to the EU release! Grats on getting it going! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
micheledipaola Posted January 26 Report Share Posted January 26 7 hours ago, erichelgeson said: discussing with someone who wants to build them in the EU, so stay tuned! Really looking forward to it! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter mjhagen Posted January 26 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 26 9 hours ago, BacioiuC said: Looking forward to the EU release! Grats on getting it going! Same here! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SuperSVGA Posted January 26 Report Share Posted January 26 Are you still working on a design with just the bare STM32? I've made a few designs but so far they all cost more and require more assembly than just using a bluepill. I'm probably going to put some together anyway just for fun, and they definitely save on space. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter sutekh Posted January 27 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 27 Fantastic work! Kit order placed. Should be just the thing for my LCIII Thank you! Out of curiosity, what benchmarking utility is that @Chopsticks? It looks superior to any of the 4-5 I currently have installed, and I can't seem to identify it! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
68kMLA Supporter erichelgeson Posted January 27 Author 68kMLA Supporter Report Share Posted January 27 (edited) Thanks @sutekh! Works great on my LCIII Benchmarking util is: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/scsi-director-pro-40 @SuperSVGA I stopped going down that route for those exact reasons. You can still get blue pills and I have been working on getting "fakes" working - when the time comes they are no longer available I think the effort to port to a new board is easier and cheaper than building it in. Kinda like the versatility! Edited January 27 by erichelgeson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.