Upgrading 6100's HD and CD

Mack,

Grab that 12x CD-ROM before it disappears. Of all my computers, finding faster CD drives is the toughest task without spending a lot of money.

Yes, you can get adapters for SCSI hard drives. In Seattle, a recycling company sells the 68 pin adapter for $7.95 and the 80 pin for $14.95 US currency. When my son was in Japan he bought me a 68 to 50 pin SCSI adapter from a store in Tokyo that had every adapter imaginable. I am sure you have similar options in Hong Kong.

I bought an adapter for a friend close by and he suggested an idea that I had not considered. If you need to, you can plug the adapter into the motherboard and then change to a 68 pin cable. 68 pin CD-ROM drives are not very common but if you wanted to have two 68 pin Hard drives inside the 6100 and use an external CD, that would double your hard drive capabilities and the external CD would not be any slower off the back SCSI port.

If you have a choice between 68 an 80 pin drives, I would choose a 68 pin drive just because the adapter is smaller, less to go wrong because there is no added circuitry and the 6100 will probably not distinguish between any speed difference the two drives might have.

The fact that you got the computer for free means that older machines are available if you look. Find out who is recycling older machines and make friends. They come across a lot of good stuff headed to be trashed.

By the way, your English is just fine. : )

Jim

Mack,

In the time that my sloooow typing fingers corrected a typo and added another comment, you read my first post. I suggested the posibility of a second hard drive. Please re-read the first comment.

Jim

Mack,

I did not mention hard drive size. You can use a larger hard drive as long as you partition the drive into smaller acceptable sizes. I have not memorized the size limits. Because we seem to be talking at real time, I will post this and go look for the Apple Support site that answers the question.

Jim

Update.

Here is information on 8.1 hard drive requirements. I recommend system 8.1 highly.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30344

Older drive info:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=11148

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30065

Finally, the one I was looking for:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=8647

This last one gives the 2 gig partition limit information. Quoting directly from that page:

"The maximum volume size under System 6 and System 7 is 2 GB. System 7.5 increased that limit to 4 GB and System 7.5.2 (and later) increases that limit to 2 TB on some computers, including:
-
any computer that came with System 7.5.2 or newer.
-
any Macintosh computer with PCI slots."

Hope this helps.

Jim

Mack,

You said that you
got blank screen when boot may try to replace the PRAM battery.

That is the correct solution. Here is a quick solution until you get a new battery. Push in on the power switch, push in again to turn it off and then immediately push in again to turn the power on again. This will start your monitor.

Here why it works. To save energy, companies built automatic switches into the monitors. If they did not get a wakeup signal from the computer, they would 'turn off' to save electricity. On the 6100, a fresh PRAM battery gives power to the relay switch to wake up the monitor. When you turn on the power to the computer, electricity from the wall outlet replaces the battery power. When you turn the computer off and then on again real fast, a capacitor on the motherboard does not have time to drain and so when the power switch is turned on again for the second time, power from the capacitor - not the PRAM battery - wakes up the monitor. Fun trick.

I had a 75 year old friend who learned that by accident and shared it with me. It was fun to see him figure it out on his own and then find out that it was the official fix until you buy a new battery.

Jim

( Are we old friends now? : 0 : ) )

Mack,

You can find 4 gig and 9 gig SCSI drives that are being replaced by bigger drives. You do not need to limit your self to a 2 gig drive because you are using newer operating software. With older software, you could use a 4 gig drive and have two 2 gig partitions. With 7.6.1 or later, you do not need to worry about drive size limits because any affordable SCSI hard drive will be smaller than 2 terrabytes.

Jim

Mack,

My son, Psyko, was 16 when he went on a student exchange visit to Japan and he is TOTALLY Mac. ( and Sony)

I mentioned the 75 year old because in America we joke about how old people do not understand computers or they are afraid of them. It is nice to find some who are not afraid to learn.

You have the benefit of learning from others mistakes and getting free computers. My dad bought a 6100 DOS Mac for $2,500. My first 6100 DOS Mac to match his was free, too.

Jim

Mack,

This is why having two hard drives would be fun to configure.

The original drive could go into an external case. If you are lucky and look around, you can find external SCSI drive cases that hold 2, 4, 7, 14 or even 21 SCSI CD-ROM drives or hard drives.

I found a 21 drive enclosure at Boeing Surplus in Seattle. It is a day's drive for me so I have to be lucky to find the good stuff. All the people who live in the big city can find these things every day.

My favorite is a four bay enclosure that allows me to stack a CD-ROM drive w/ SCSI ID #3, a CD-burner @ ID 4, a zip drive at ID 5 and a 4 gig hard drive @ 6 with four partitions and each partition with a different OS backup system so when any computer dies, I can repair it by plugging in the external drives and restore my computer.

With a 68 pin adapter plugged into the motherboard and a 68 pin ribbon connector and four connectors, (hopefully the last one has a terminator on it so you do not have to worry about drive termination), you can have two 68 pin hard drives internally and load different OS versions on different partitions and drives.

This link gives information on the systems available for the 6100:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112248

I would forget system 7.1 or put it on the original drive and have it as an external option. Be watching for options. You can do a lot with that computer.

Jim

Mack,

"And... that means System 7.5.3 can read a 9GB HD that is partitioned into 4GB*2+1GB? 🙂"

You are correct but limiting yourself. System 7.5 could see a drive partitioned into that arrangement. System 7.5.2 or newer, namely 7.5.3 and 7.6.1 and 8.1 and others can have partitions of any size but do not have to have partitions for drives up to 2,000 gigabytes. ( correct me on my math if that is not two terabytes!)

If you use system 8.1, you can use HFS+ which makes better use of hard drive space. Also, the 6100 was the first to use a PowerPC chip but the OS 7 was not PPC chip native. OS 8.1 was written for the PPC chip so you will want to move up to 8.1 on one of your partitions. If you boot from a system older than 8.1, it will not read files from the HFS+ formatted drive but it will give a message on the screen that says "where did all my files go." They are just fine. Change your "Startup Disk" to an 8.1 drive/partition and all the files will be visible.

So, one hard drive can be partitioned in HFS for booting and storing older systems and software and the other drive can be formatted HFS+ and have several partitions with 8.1 and newer things.

Jim

Hello Mack!

I'm the guy who lives "close" to Jim. Anyone with a 6100 cannot live without this site:

PowerMac 6100 Upgrade Guide

I have a 6100/60 CD and it's still a nice computer (except for web browsing). Mine now has a 4.3GB SCSI drive partitioned into a 1.99G boot partition (had 7.5.5 when I installed the drive--it's 7.6.1 now), and the remainder for storage.

The 6100 is unique among Macs in that its memory controller seems to have no limit to the amount of RAM it can handle. The normal RAM load is 8MB soldered to the logic board and two RAM slots that are "supposed" to accept a 32MB stick each, for a total of 72MB RAM. However, larger sticks are available. Today, I can't find any larger than 64MB but that's still a nice boost. Mine now has 136MB RAM. This page shows a "128MB kit" for the 6100. I suspect you can find something similar locally.

Even replacing the 2X CD-ROM with a 4X makes a huge difference. I find the 4X versions to be quieter, too.

You've found kindred spirits here; be sure to keep us posted on your progress.

Allan