Re: Can you fit a larger Hard Disk in a Powermac 6100 7100 8100 series
PeterH
On Jun 13, 2009, at 3:41 AM, Joshua Lewis wrote:
> PC servers still use SCSI today, they use bigger SCSI hard disks
> such as 20GIG 30GIG 40GIG 60GIG 80GIG.
The most common sizes are (or were): 1, 2, 4, 9, 18, 36 GB, and a few
sizes above 36 GB.
Earlier drives had less than 1 GB per platter.
The 1, 2 and 4 GB drives had 1 GB per platter.
The 9, 18 and 36 GB drives had 9 GB per sets of platters.
Above 36 GB things got to be rather specialized, with 68 GB drives
appearing in 10,000 rpm models (the others I mentioned were generally
7,200 rpm models, the Barracudas; the 10K models were Cheetahs).
To be useful on an old Mac two things are required: a 68-to-50 or an
80-to-50 pin adapter (but 1, 2 and 4 GB were commonly available in 50
pins as well), and an initializer which can partition the drive into
2 GB partitions.
Drive Setup can do this, but it supports a maximum of eight
partitions, unless it is substantially modified. Drive Setup is
easily modified to support otherwise unsupported drives. Just take a
supported Seagate model and duplicate its device data using ResEdit.
Once you get up to System 8.1, matters get a little better, and 8.6
is much more flexible than 8.1 or 8.5.1.
System 9 better still with large drives.
Joshua Lewis
Magnetic Control Industry
Larger hard disk's are too high technology for these legacy, outdated Machine's; however though if you format the ROM drive in these machines and install OS X hard disk management software it may be possible to bypass the NuBus SCSI image controller and actually install The Large Disk drive you've been fantasizing about; theoretically installing 15k and 10k SCSI drives larger than 2 GigaRAM. I would be careful though, machines this old have been known to burst into flames when trying to upgrade them.
Antonio Rodríguez
Answering the original question, in a 6100/7100/8100 you can put any SCSI hard drive, taking into account this:
1) It has to be a drive with a 50 pins connector (or you have the adapter from 50 pins to whatever the drive needs).
2) If you want to run any Mac OS prior to 8.1, you have to divide the drive into 2 GB partitions. A 15 GB drive would, thus, appear as eight logical drives in the desktop (seven of them of 2 GB, and the eighth of 1 GB). This can limit the portion of the drive you can *use*, but if you can't get a smaller drive, you can leave part of it unused. If you run Mac OS 8.1 or 9.x, IIRC, you have to have a boot/System partition of 2 GB or less, and can cover the remainder of the disk with just other huge partition.
3) If it is not an Apple branded drive, you may need to use a third party disk management software to prepare it (Apple's utilities are known to work only on Apple drives). Of course, if the drive has already been used on a Mac, it is prepared, and you don't need to do anything to make it work.
For example, my 6100/66 has a 4.3 GB SCSI drive. It is connected directly to the computer without the need of any adapter because it has a 50 pin connector. As this 6100 runs Mac OS 8.1, the drive is divided in a 2 GB boot partition and a 2.3 GB data partition. If it used OS 7.x or 8.0, this drive would need at least three partitions.
Greetings, Antonio Rodríguez (Grijan) -- Galería fotográfica: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajgelado/> Blog: <http://tecnousuario.blogspot.com/>
PeterH
On Jun 17, 2009, at 10:51 AM, Antonio Rodríguez wrote:
> 2) If you want to run any Mac OS prior to 8.1, you have to divide
> the drive into 2 GB partitions. A 15 GB drive would, thus, appear
> as eight logical drives in the desktop (seven of them of 2 GB, and
> the eighth of 1 GB). This can limit the portion of the drive you
> can *use*, but if you can't get a smaller drive, you can leave part
> of it unused. If you run Mac OS 8.1 or 9.x, IIRC, you have to have
> a boot/System partition of 2 GB or less, and can cover the
> remainder of the disk with just other huge partition.
8.0 had master only support, for those Macs, the Beiges, in
particular, which featured IDE drives for the standard drives, but
which also supported SCSI for the optional internal Zip and any
external drive.
8.1 added slave support to 8.0. Drive Setup was appropriately
changed. At this point, the Beige's ROM had been fixed, and slaves
were now supported, so that any optional internal Zips were IDE, not
SCSI. SCSI was still supported for external drives.
8.5.1 and 8.6 were greatly improved versions of the basic MacOS 8 theme.
As a practical matter, 2 GB partitions makes sense for any disk drive
in this generation of Macs, as the largest capacity external backup
device was a 2 GB DDS drive.
Antonio Rodríguez
These were the first generation PowerMacs from 1994, and didn't have IDE
support out of the box. So these machines are limited to using an SCSI
drive. On the other hand, I wasn't talking about boot/data *drives*, but
boot/data *partitions*.
Anyway, backup tape size doesn't matter much these days, because I doubt
anybody would use it to backup any computer: it's easier and faster to
use an Ethernet or LocalTalk network and set up an FTP server in a
computer with a bigger hard drive. And even faster (and relatively
cheap) to buy an external SCSI hard drive and have two copies of all
important data.
Greetings,
Antonio Rodríguez (Grijan)
--
Galería fotográfica: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajgelado/>
Blog: <http://tecnousuario.blogspot.com/>
PeterH escribió:
trag
On Jun 17, 1:26 pm, Antonio Rodríguez <ajgel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyway, backup tape size doesn't matter much these days, because I doubt
> anybody would use it to backup any computer:
RW drives connected via FireWire. I'll have more pieces of media (12
GB vs. 4 GB per media) but the media cost per GB will be lower.
Now any backup is better than no backup, so your discussion of copying
to another hard drive is better than nothing.
But a really good backup involves multiple copies with at least one of
them taken off site. Tape or optical disk is still a might cheaper
when making multiple copies.
Back in the 90s I was using DAT DDS2. I was so proud that I had a
backup when my hard drive died....and the backup was bad too, as it
turns out. Ever since then, I don't consider myself backed up unless
there's more than one copy available.
Jeff Walther
Antonio Rodríguez
> Back in the 90s I was using DAT DDS2. I was so proud that I had a
> backup when my hard drive died....and the backup was bad too, as it
> turns out. Ever since then, I don't consider myself backed up unless
> there's more than one copy available.
fail many many times, often when you most need them, at recovery time...
The matter of backups is a delicate one. A backup isn't useful if it
isn't updated frequently, and asking anybody to spend all Friday
afternoons doing the customary tape backup rotation when they could be
on a walk with their children is almost like inviting them not to have a
backup at all. IMHO, having an on-site up-to-date backup is far more
important than having an (poorly updated) offsite one (what's more
probable, a fire, an earthquake, or a hard drive failure?). Thus, I have
developed this small program that automatically updates a main directory
with a copy of itself on another drive, several times a day if you want.
That way, my clients can have always an update, in case the hard drive
fails, the OS corrupts something, or the user accidentally deletes or
breaks something (my backup program is for Windows, but is free for
anybody who wants it - just write me). Of course, there are other
programs that do it also, and you can do the same using only Finder or
Explorer.
Of course, other methods (burning to CD/DVD/BlueRay, ZIPs, backup tapes,
even floppy disks!) work also, and everyone should choose what fits
him/her better. That's why there are several different methods.
Greetings,
Antonio Rodríguez (Grijan)
--
Photo gallery: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajgelado/>
Blog: <http://tecnousuario.blogspot.com/>
Charles Lenington
> I thought this were a serious mailing list where questions from
> newbies were treated with the due respect...
>
> Answering the original question, in a 6100/7100/8100 you can put any
> SCSI hard drive, taking into account this:
>
> 1) It has to be a drive with a 50 pins connector (or you have the
> adapter from 50 pins to whatever the drive needs).
> 2) If you want to run any Mac OS prior to 8.1, you have to divide the
> drive into 2 GB partitions. A 15 GB drive would, thus, appear as eight
> logical drives in the desktop (seven of them of 2 GB, and the eighth
> of 1 GB). This can limit the portion of the drive you can *use*, but
> if you can't get a smaller drive, you can leave part of it unused. If
> you run Mac OS 8.1 or 9.x, IIRC, you have to have a boot/System
> partition of 2 GB or less, and can cover the remainder of the disk
> with just other huge partition.
a device/volume limitation also (at least on my IIsi)
7 devices to a scsi I/II chain, 14 for some scsi II & III (III = all
drives over scsi II (se/lv/etc)) chain (one is computer)
iirc - 7 volumes (= partitions) per device ... or was it total
device/volume.... ugh Bruce a little help.
> 3) If it is not an Apple branded drive, you may need to use a third
> party disk management software to prepare it (Apple's utilities are
> known to work only on Apple drives). Of course, if the drive has
> already been used on a Mac, it is prepared, and you don't need to do
> anything to make it work.
lacie silverlinning,
Drive 7 for sys 7 (rare, apple snapped it up shortly after introduction
to use ( I paid for a copy just in time thru one of the usergroups I was
member of, in the SFBay area)
emelvy
On Jun 17, 1:01 am, Joshua Lewis <joshantiq...@gmail.com> wrote:
> can you fit a larger hard disk in a powermac 6100 7100 8100. By Joshua Lewis
I have a Performa 6115CD (based on a 6100/60). I boosted its speed
from
60 MHz to a respectable 300 MHz by adding a Newer Technology MaxPowr
G3 accelerator card, and ran it for several hours every day for eleven
(!) years.
Apple's original 350-MB hard drive began to act up after about eight
years.
It was anyway too small for my needs, so I replaced it with an IBM
4560 MB hd,
which I bought used on eBay for about $15 plus S&H. After a year or
two this
drive began to act up, so I went again to eBay and bought a similar
one; it is
still in working order.
These drives have 50-pin connectors. Hard drives with later versions
of SCSI
(SCSI-2 and SCSI-3) have 68- or 80-pin connecters and are easier to
find than
50-pin models. Although one can buy an adapter to connect them to a
50-pin
ribbon cable, I discovered that adding such an adapter would lengthen
the
assembly by an inch or so, and it would then not fit in the 6100.
I've not owned a 7100 or 8100, and don't know whether this applies to
them.
Incidentally, my reason for finally retiring my souped-up Performa,
which served
me well for those many years (and was still working three years later
when I last
turned it on), had nothing to do with the hardware. It was rather
that no web
broswer that would work on a G3 machine was capable of handling the
fancy
features found in modern web pages. It seemed that about a quarter of
the
web pages I visited would freeze the computer; web browsing became a
continual pain. So in Feb. 2006 I gave in and bought an iMac G5, one
of the
last PPC models made, which has been working very well.
Larry Stotler
> And this brings up another issue fot 7.5.x and maybe 8.x - There is also
> a device/volume limitation also (at least on my IIsi)
> 7 devices to a scsi I/II chain, 14 for some scsi II & III (III = all
> drives over scsi II (se/lv/etc)) chain (one is computer)
> iirc - 7 volumes (= partitions) per device ... or was it total
> device/volume.... ugh Bruce a little help.
controllers have 7 devices, with 1 being resevered for the processor.
Due to the fact that the SCSI controller is an actually processor and
not like IDE/SATA being part of the chipset, it has many advantages.
SCSI never sufferef from the IDE limits of 528MB, 8.4GB, 137GB, etc.
The only real limit to SCSI is OS driver support and OS partitioning
limitations.
SCSI also implemented features like Diconnect and Native Command Queing
(NCQ), which allows the SCSI controller to "disconnect" from the
system. Say you have to copy larges files between drives. Well, the
OS requests that the Controller does this, and the Controller says,
Ok, I'll tell you when I'm done and as I'm doing it. So, it tells the
OS where it's at and the processor doesn't have to worry with it. NCQ
allows the controller to re-order the way that data is pulled from a
drive so that it's pulled in a sequence that is the fastest, not in
the order that the data was requested(when able to). Most newer SATA
drives have NCQ implemented.
Finally, IDE burners(and SATA) are basically a SCSI type system in
many ways(from my understanding). Linux used to use an ide-scsi
driver for PATA burners. Not sure about Classic or OS X.
SCSI has had many advantages over IDE/SATA, but never Price. Which is
why you don't see it very often. Apple was basically the only
consumer manufacter to use them
MACMAN
I like the look of them
These computers are made from off the shelf parts unique mother board
and unique CPU and unique video card display connector video card
unique feel.
By Joshua Lewis Joshan...@gmail.com
Andrei
Andrei
I read about ur program for backup. I am looking exactly for smtg like that,
also for windows :) can you share it? would it be possible to use it in my
company to backup one computer (so, commercial use, even though for just one
PC - I want to make sure it's ok with you).
tks alot!
ANdrei
----- Original Message -----
From: "Antonio Rodríguez" <ajge...@gmail.com>
To: <1st-po...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 1:52 AM
Subject: Re: Can you fit a larger Hard Disk in a Powermac 6100 7100 8100
series