At 15:30 -0400 10/29/2004, Quadlist wrote:
From: "Profile Null" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [q] External Storage Solutions for 'Centris 650' Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 13:35:15 -0700
So thanks to a good buddy, I have a Centris 650,
I noticed this box has some sort of external scsi port. I don't know much about scsi and am really unsure of what would be the right external drive to get (my experience on the PC has always been match the drives to the card, like Ultra-Wide for example) and also where to get it. Somebody told me it was possible to connect an oridinary IDE disk to some adapter circuitry and use that with an old mac. I've googled but haven't find this yet. Is there such a thing? Do you guys know where the drive compatibility information is at? Would eBay be the only place to pick up a disk or is there a supplier?
If you want to learn more about SCSI, try <http://www.scsifaq.org>.
The Centris 650 has a 50 pin narrow unenhanced SCSI port. That means that its top theoretical speed is 5 MB/s. This is rather slow by today's standards, but is acceptable for the older, smaller, more compact software that one typically uses on a Centris.
With few exceptions, any SCSI drive with a 50 pin connector should work with your machine. Be careful, because there are a number of folks in the Mac categories on Ebay selling "50 pin" drives which are really 80 pin (SCA) drives with an adapter attached. Such adapted drives might work, but they can cause severe headaches because there are several termination issues when using adapted drives.
If you want to replace your internal drive with a larger one, simply buy a SCSI drive mechanism with a 50 pin connector, configure the new drive properly for termination and SCSI ID, format it using a Mac hard drive formatting utility (if it is not an Apple branded drive, you will a need third-party utility for this, Apple's included utility will not recognize the drive), such as FWB's Hard Disk Tool Kit (HDTK) or Intech's <http://www.intechusa.com> HD Speedtools. There are also older utilities such as from Charismac and such which work with the older System software.
If you want an external drive, you'll need to get a SCSI drive which is installed in an external enclosure or buy a drive mechanism and an enclosure and assemble them yourself. The external enclosure provides a power supply to the drive and converts from the drive mechanism's internal-type ribbon cable to the external-style cabling used when moving around outside the computer box.
There are adapters available which convert an IDE drive into a SCSI drive--or rather translate a SCSI bus into something an IDE drive can understand. Try the AEC-7720U from Acard. This unit converts from IDE to a narrow SCSI connection (50 pins). It has a top data rate of 20 MB/s (Narrow Ultra-SCSI) but that's okay because Ultra-SCSI is backward compatible with the Centris's unenhanced SCSI--or should be. I haven't actually tested this particular configuration.
The only advantage of going the adapter route is that it will let you put a truly huge inexpensive IDE drive on your old machine. However, IIRC, the Centric needs its hard disk volumes partitioned into pieces of 2 GB or smaller (or is that just the boot volume?). So you might have a bit of trouble, if you find yourself partitioning a 160 GB drive into eighty 2 GB partitions.
The Centris 650 has three NuBus expansion slots (now obsolete, no new cards available). There were never any IDE cards made for them. However there were a couple of Fast & Wide (not UltraWide, just Fast & Wide) SCSI cards built which are still available on the used market. The primary choices were the FWB JackHammer and the Atto Silicon Express IV (SEIV). Note that there was a later PCI JackHammer, so be sure you're looking at Nubus cards if you shop for a JackHammer.
These SCSI cards will let you conveniently connect 68 pin drives to your machine and they have a theoretical transfer rate of 20 MB/s.
Another option is to get a removable media drive. Such drives are slower than hard drives but can be convenient. I'm no fan of ZIP drive because of their reliability issues but an external SCSI ZIP drive would probably be easy and cheap to find.
Personally, I prefer the Fujitsu Magneto Optical (MO) drives. A disk about the physical size of a ZIP disk costs $8 - $15 and holds 640 MB of data (more than 6 times what a ZIP holds at less than 2X the price) and is extremely reliable. You might look for the Fujitsu DynaMO 640 if interested. There is also a 1.3 GB model, and I think it was available with a SCSI interface, but I've occasionally seen the DynaMO 640 for under $20.
I hope that helps,
Jeff Walther
-- Quadlist is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
Quadlist info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/quadlist.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/quadlist%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
