|
|
Under Construction!
(here's just what's going so far)
Okay. You have a PowerBook. You have SCSI. Now what?
Well you can connect a huge number (well, 7) of high speed devices to
this baby. Like hard drives, scanners, CD ROMs, CD-Rs, Zips, Jazs, Syquests.
And even another Mac.
What you need:
1. A HDI-30 SCSI cable.
Maybe:
2. A terminator (or two)
So what's an HDI-30 cable?
To confuse you already, there're two. Both called HDI-30 by Apple to confuse you specially. But this's how to tell them apart:
A. The HDI-30 SCSI Docking Cable is a cable that does one thing and only one: it connects your PB to a desktop Mac (any Mac since the Plus) and turns your PB into an external hard disk. Fast file transfers. Good isn't it? This is known as SCSI Disk Mode
B. The HDI-30 SCSI Peripheral cable does everything else. It
connects external devices like hard drives and scanners to your PB.
So how the @#$%@!?! do I tell them apart?
Easily. Cable A has 30 pins.
Cable B has 29 pins. One pin missing. Look and see. See?
Easy.
So what do I do with Cable B?
So then you plug in and play with your peripherals. Here's my setup for example:
PowerBook-->HDI-30 (29 pin)-->External Hard Disk*-->External Hard Disk-->CD ROM-->Zip drive*
OK. So now we get technical. The asterisks (*) denote termination ON. PowerBooks do not provide active termination, relying upon external devices to do so. In this case, the first and last devices are terminated. The Zip has manually witchable termination, as does the Iomega Jaz drive. The new Zip 250s have automatic termination apparently.
The SCSI all travels on a bus. A bus carries information from place
to place. On the PowerBook, the SCSI bus has eight seats only. One (# 7)
is permanently occupied (drive, if you like) by your PowerBook. So the
Mac is the 'Busmaster'. But that leaves positions 0-7 free. So here's how
mine (based upon the diagram above) looks:
ID Device
0 -
1 Hard disk
2 Hard disk
3 CD ROM drive
4 -
5 -
6 Zip drive
7 PowerBook 5300
Now, if you own anything but a PowerBook 150, a IDE drive Duo 2300 or any PowerPC PowerBook, your PB will most likely occupy ID 0. That's because most earlier PBs used internal SCSI drives which were generally numbered 0. On rare occasions, someone might have upgraded the hard drive which had a different number (highly unlikely but possible).
So, in this set-up, SCSI IDs 0,4 and 5 are free. So I could add, say, a scanner, a CDR, a Jaz, a Syquest or whatever. In rare cases, some old laser printers (like the Apple LaserWriter IISC or Apple's Personal LaserWriter SC connected via a SCSI cable (yes, dumb idea, huh?).
All the more recent PBs have IDE hard drives which operate quite separately from from the SCSI bus. So this leaves ID # 0 free on these machines.
So what stupid SCSI tricks can I do with a recent, IDE-equipped PB?
A lot of stupid tricks. WARNING! I take NO responsibility if you fry your logic board attempting any of this. Don't come crying to me.
OK, so I have a desktop Mac IIx and a IIsi with SCSI hard disks in them for storage/backup. I'm far too lazy to plug in a monitor or a keyboard. So I shutdown (important) first and plug in that SCSI cable I have hanging loosely from my Zip drive. So then the startup sequence goes:
1. Switch on external devices (like the Mac IIx)
2. Let Mac IIx boot up using a floppy drive
3. Wait until floppy disk stops complaining
4. Boot PowerBook
5. Check SCSI Probe to see if the SCSI bus is terminated (scroll down
to see the picture of SCSI Probe. You click where it says "SCSIProbe 5.2".
If it says 'by Robert Polis' - you're OK. If it flashes "Bus not terminated",
shutdown immediately and disconnect. Rethink. Hmmm...It means you're
going to need a terminator or 2 in there, depending on your setup).
6. If all okay, copy and backup to your heart's content.
7. When finished, shutdown your PB first, THEN and only then switch
off your external devices. DO shutdown. Don't disconnect while a PB is
sleeping only. If you try this and fail you probably deserve to
lose your logic board (I don't really mean that. But B Careful.).
My
PowerBook 100/140/170 has SCSI but no video.
Good lateral thinking. Yes, there were devices (I stress were) that
force-fed video signals through the SCSI device that allowed you to see
colour on external displays (on the 140 and 170). They're hard to find
though. Don't waste your SCSI port. If you need external video, you need
a newer PowerBook (on average, 160s and 170s cost the same and the 160
has video, grayscale and SCSI docking mode).
How do I mount these hard disks and Zips and things anyway?
Well, you could try sitting on them and...oh never mind. There're a
number of utilities which come with commercial software (like FWB Hard
Disk Toolkit [www.fwb.com] or APS PowerTools), but two downloadable utilities
stand out: SCSI Probe and Mt Everything. Here's what they look like:
Of course, I'm sitting in a hammock right now, so nothing's connected. But it sure looks busy when things are connected. Mt Everything has a couple of advantages. First, it lets you mount devices one at a time, instead of all at once like SCSI Probe. Second, if you click the 'Options' button, you can choose to let Mt Everything use its own built-in driver to mount the disk (useful for a Zip or Jaz where the Mac you'r e using doesn't have an Iomega driver on it). It'll even mount hard drives like this. This's what part of the 'Options' window looks like:
