[richincident]

Hi! I have two SCSI 1 external disk drives that I used with old power pc's--in fact with several 61xx machines. The machines were running os 8.5 and at least one of these drives was a startup drive.

NOW I want to get the data off them! BUT I no longer have my 61xx machines. I DO have a machine running os7.5, and another running something even earlier, AND a beige g-3 running OS 9 when it feels like booting. I have an ibook and an imac running 10. 4.5 and 10.3.

Anyone know where I can get some drive mapping software for 7.5.5? OR should I upgrade the 6300 to 8.5? Will that help?

Ideas welcome!

 

[sinclair_tm]

OS 7.5.5 has SCSI drivers, so you should be able to connect them to that Mac, and then transfer the info over the network to the newer Macs. I have used SCSI 1 disks on Macs from System 6 (Mac Plus) up to Mac OS 10.2 (PowerMac 8600). But OS 7.5.5 should support HFS+, so it'll read the disks that you used with OS 8.5.

 

[richincident]

Thanks! I KNOW 7.5.5 SHOULD read the scsi disks, but apparently I don't have an extension or app that can map them. They both were configured with Sliverlining at the time, and I THINK that there was an extension that fired them up at startup. There is no such extension available on this mac. I have been looking for some kind of utility (norton? Silverlining? SCSI Tools? ) That would get some communication going--even though I can see the disk light glow when the computer starts. I KNOW they can communicate, but apparently I am missing a critical piece of software. I theorize that a new installation of 8.5 would provide more tools and allow the disks to be read. Am I crazy? Is there a place where an app for spinning those drives could be found?

THANKS!

 

[sinclair_tm]

If you apply power, the drive will spin, even if not connect to the computer. If they are not spinning, then the drives are bad, and there isn't anything that can be done. Every Mac System/OS has the SCSI drivers built in, you should need anything else to mount them. Do you get the disk needs to be formatted/initialized dialog box when you attach the drive? And speaking of attaching the drive, SCSI isn't one of the hot swappable systems out there, unless made for it. In order to use them, make your connections with everything turned off, then turn the external drives on, give then 30 seconds and then turn the Mac on. Also, with SCSI, you must make sure that each device has a different ID, and that the last drive on the chain is terminated correctly, or they will not show up. As for ID, the internal hard drive is #0 or #1, the CD drive #5 (or on rare occasions #6), and the SCSI bus is #7. And now that I have said something about termination, I bet that is your problem, the external drives will not show up if not terminated.

 

[richincident]

I am savvy enough on SCSI to know about terminating, and I also have the drive spinning before startup. On my 'new' beige G-3 the disk utility could SEE the drive, but noted that it was 'non-ide.'

So helpful!

I THOUGHT that 7.5.5 had some kind of scsi chain utility but I don't see anything on the machine that does that. Also, there are changes in the light and spinning when the computer powers up, vs. when the disk is simply lit up but the computer is off. So there is some kind of communication, but not sufficient to read the darn thing. Since there is nothing I care about on the hard drive I am thinking I will upgrade (turns out I have 8, 8..1, 8.5 and 8.6 all available). These drives are all set to 5, but since I can't see the chain I can't tell if anything weird has been done to the settings on the mac. Doubt it though.

Dusty borderlands eh!

 

[sinclair_tm]

If they are set to SCSI ID #5, then change one to #3 and then turn everything on, and if the drive is good, OS 9 will mount it. You could always try one ID at a time until the drive either mounts, or you run out of IDs. If you run out of IDs, then I'd say the drive is bad, or the enclosure.