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MP All Models Can someone tell me what kind of drive this is?

machenryr

machenryr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2016
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And whether I can get anything to read it? I think it was in the original iMac. But I took the hard drives out of all of my decommissioned Macs throughout the years. I’m just trying to find some things. Not sure I will be able to read anything anyway. Probably OS 9.

I thought it was ATA serial? IDE?
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Ooooohhhh....an old 40 Megabyte SCSI drive. That's MEGAbytes, not Gigabytes. Probably went in something like a Macintosh SE, SE/30, or something of that era (~1988–1990). Does it spin up? And if so, are you wearing ear protection?! 🤪
 
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If it was OS 9, then it was likely formatted as HFS. A modern Mac can read HFS but not write to it. I have used Conner drives in the past but only in Windows machines.
 
Thank you. SCSI. That’s right! I’m guessing OS 9. I have no idea. I remember i tried to upgrade my Macs to OS 9 as it was stable, but i could be getting my timelines messed up. It could have come out of a Mac Plus? Mac IIsi? No. I still have that in storage someplace. G5 Dual 450?
 
50 pin SCSI from a Mac circa 1987-93 . Gotta luv those molex power connectors . That's a whopping 40 Megabyte drive . It's probably dead by now ... they need to fire up on an occasional basis . I still have an operational Macintosh IIx that has a SCSI drive .

The real cool SCSI drives though were the Cheetahs in the PMG4 era . When those babies fired up it sounded exactly like the Batmobile's rear rocket thruster . You almost wanted to hit the deck and cover your head if you weren't warned before .
 
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Geez. 40 MEGABYTES. What the hell can I have in there I thought was valuable enough to drag around? Lol.
 
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machenryr said:
Thank you. SCSI. That’s right! I’m guessing OS 9. I have no idea. I remember i tried to upgrade my Macs to OS 9 as it was stable, but i could be getting my timelines messed up. It could have come out of a Mac Plus? Mac IIsi? No. I still have that in storage someplace. G5 Dual 450?
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Probably System 6 or System 7. Mac Plus did not have internal HDs, but maybe if you had it in an external case. However, that sled makes me think internal. Could very well be a IIsi...I had a Mac Classic of the same (1990) vintage that had a 20MB HD, so would make sense it came out of a IIsi. Definitely not G4 (dual 450 would've been a G4, rather than G5)...that's on down the road and either IDE/ATA or much more advanced SCSI (on a card).
 
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The drive is older than your G4 dual 450, which doesn't have a SCSI connection, unless you bought it with a SCSI card..
The Mac IIsi should be a good choice to try it out.
 
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machenryr said:
Geez. 40 MEGABYTES. What the hell can I have in there I thought was valuable enough to drag around? Lol.
Click to expand...

A few MP3s ? One album of your greatest hits , maybe ? The forgotten sessions ...
[automerge]1589064230[/automerge]
I actually looked it up - it'll hold exactly four minutes of WAV ( 16 bit / 44.1 kHz ) . The consolation is that it'll be in stereo . Thank goodness for modern technology ...
 
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Yeah right. My Mac Plus. I used a Dataframe 90 drive. That's 90 MB. Cost me about 1k! Or was it a Dataframe 20??
 
machenryr said:
Yeah. Around 1985.
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First Macs to ship with a 40MB drive were the Macintosh II and SE in 1987, but I think those were 5-1/4", such as the Quantum Bigfoot drives.

1985 and earlier had no hard drive standard.

The caddy and cable rule out the 40SC external drive enclosure.

Probably a IIci or IIcx based on the caddy and cable.

Mac OS 6 through maybe 7.5.x.
 
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If so I must’ve replaced the IIsi drive at some point. This has to be the original.
 
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