Q: Micronet SCSI Utility Problem
I have recently obtained an Apple HD20SC with its drive replaced with an IBM 153 MB drive. At first, the drive wouldn't mount on my System 6 Desktop when I booted from a disk. I would have to use the Micronet SCSI Utility to mount it manually. I used the Micronet SCSI Utility to create two partitions, 0 and 1. 0 was just a filler partition, with 1 megabyte, while 1 was 152 megabytes. Partition 1 mounted, so I put a system folder on it. I then tried to boot from the drive, but my Macintosh Plus stayed on the ? Floppy Disk Screen. No X. I then tried to format the drive with interleave 3. (I find it strange that the interleaves were in 1, 2, 3, as opposed to , 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.) When I tried to do that, I got a Sense Key = 5, Error Type 36. Formatting Failed. I tried formatting in every interleave, 1-7, but only interleave 1 would work. I know that the Macintosh Plus requires interleave 3 or 3:1. The Micronet SCSI Utility will not let me do that. The Drive is terminated properly, with the terminator in the upper SCSI port on the drive, and the SCSI Cable on the lower port. What is going wrong? Should I use the Apple HD SC setup instead? Do I need to have a battery installed? I have a Utilities Disk with the Apple HD SC setup on it coming in the mail, along with a replacement battery.
Maybe it won't boot because I have no proper way to install System 6, other than dragging the system folder on to the hard drive icon on the desktop.
Macintosh Plus 1MB, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, Most likely converted from a 128k or 512k
Posted on Jul 26, 2015 7:50 PM
>I tried with and without a terminator.
Since the drive apparently has its own termination through the installed resistor packs, it may be best to stay with that (in this case, do not attach an external terminator, or you would get double termination).
>The drive and the computer still appear to be functional as usual.
For the future, you may want to use the drive as an external, but not bootable, hard drive for the Plus (with the drive's ribbon cable connections restored to original). BTW, do you still have the Micronet enclosure (Macintosh Plus SCSI Hard Drive Problem) without its hard drive? If so, it could possibly be used to carry out boot tests with yet another hard drive (preferably one with good documentation, and a "disable unit attention" jumper).
>Are there any other wires worth cutting,
The problem with the WDS-3160 drive is that it does not have many jumper options, and we only have access to very limited documentation about settings and features. It is more or less all guesswork. So, I cannot really suggest anything here.
>do you think that the problem is in the drive's PROM,
The drive as such appears to be OK. It is only that it does not work well with the Plus, which seems to be caused by limitations in that computer's ability to handle certain aspects of SCSI. I do not think it would be worth the cost or time to try to locate software that possibly could alter the drive's settings. It is probably better to use the WDS-3160 as it is (without bootability) with the Plus, or perhaps fully functional with another pre-1998 Macintosh computer.
Posted on Aug 12, 2015 3:50 AM















