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| Adtron SCSI Compact Flash drive? |
Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 16:18:21
took out8mb card now the HD toolkit sees 30.75 mb adtron card. I put CF 8mb card back in its camera and works fine. So this may be a factor, one card is fine, second card may have to be matched. Ill check the spec sheet but that's my take on it as both CF cards work and were both cleared in Kodak cameras.
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Posted by: snuci on 2013-10-11 16:35:21
So let me try to rephrase this so I understand... Somewhere here you have the Adtron unit, the 8MB CF card and a Kodak camera that the CF card came from?
(1) took out (the) 8mb card (from the Adtron device so there are no cards in the Adtron device and) now the HD toolkit sees (a) 30.75 mb adtron card (with no CF cards in it). I put CF 8mb card (that was in the Adtron) back in its (Kodak) camera and works fine (in the Kodak camera?). This is what I'm confused about...
So this may be a factor, one card is fine, second card may have to be matched. Ill check the spec sheet but that's my take on it as both CF cards work and were both cleared in Kodak cameras. I thought the 8mb CF card didn't work and showed no capacity? od did you need to format them in a Kodak camera for them to work?
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 17:14:02
8 mb card is not on the scsi card, it won't show. It may or may not be a limitation of the card. The 32 meg cf card is working great and installing 7.5 on it now.
Hard Disk toolkit 2.5 works, when I install like 7.5 and reboot to make sure it works ill post.
This is all mute, just trying the card but as it stands it works great installing. Initialization and low level format went great.
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Posted by: snuci on 2013-10-11 17:26:47
Awesome. Now to see how big it will go. At least we know it doesn't have to be 128MB 🙂
The spec sheet I posted says it doesn't support the "FmtData and CmpLst" bits of the SCSI Format command. I was really worried that the CF cards had to be formatted with some proprietary format from the factory and why I was thinking you couldn't see any capacity. Kinda like an X/Profile that has a built in onboard proprietary "Format" function for the CF cards it uses. But if you are able to do what you're doing, it's all good. Once you can boot, we're golden.
This is great news. Thanks for keeping us up to date.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 17:34:36
Boot up time is fassstttt on PowerBook 540c, if I turn off HD toolkit checks on startup I'm sure it would take less time. Of course it is totally silent. I actually got this just for the PowerBook 100 I am trying to restore since it uses less power but would have been nice to get a second card dog gone it. I am sure the power monster guys just copied this as it is from 1999.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 17:50:49
FWB bench test says
Average access time. 2.4ms
Average seek time. 0.0ms
Read trans/sec 413
Write trans/sec 325
Sustained read 445 kb/sec
Sustained write373 kb/sec
Although using this unit the control strip always shows the hard drive is off. Probably because it does not use 12 volts.
AAt. 28.6ms
AST. 12.3ms
RTS. 275
WTS 62
Here's where it looks ugly and after seeing how fast it really was I call fowl play.
SR 1132 kb/sec
SR 1087 kb/sec
I think maybe the age of Hard Disk toolkit being older than the scsi card that it may not be able to determine the sustained reads and writes.
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Posted by: snuci on 2013-10-11 17:55:34
If you have the stats for comparison sake, what does a normal drive do in that computer?
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Posted by: Paralel on 2013-10-11 17:55:49
Sweet. Glad to see it is working. I ordered a 4GB card, so hopefully it can handle that.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 18:14:24
Ill boot my other up now and post when I get results.
I posted up with the other results.
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Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2013-10-11 18:44:17
The PowerMonster uses an ACARD SCSIDE bridge chip. Its a newer design.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 19:28:36
Does that help it speed things up? A new scsi chip with legacy hardware may not mean a whole lot. Physically regardless of the sustained reads and writes it was fast, opening anything,booting everything that does hard disk access.
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Posted by: snuci on 2013-10-11 19:53:08
It certainly wouldn't be a copy because the technology has differed a little in the last 15 years 🙂 But it might have been a competitive derivative back in the day that has improved over the years. Not sure how long Acard has been around but there would have been competitors in this space back in 1998.
It doesn't really matter much as long as the Adtron card works and keeps our vintage computers going. At this point the bottleneck in speed would probably be the architecture of the computer and not the drive. But let's test it out a little longer before we declare that victory. The advantage of faster or more advance technology would surely be lost anyway.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-11 20:06:12
Well 540 to 540 physical speed is 35 seconds boot with physical drive, 19 seconds for the adtron. So it will do just fine for me once I modify the old drive for proper mounting.
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Posted by: techknight on 2013-10-11 20:13:59
This card doesnt look like its too difficult to copy. it is using an off-the-shelf 83C96 SCSI interface IC. Then its using an AM186 microcontroller, and its firwmare is right next to it waiting to be dumped.
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Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2013-10-11 20:27:59
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?22906
http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=SCSI2IDE
Uses a Z80 CPU and Z53C800 SCSI controller. The only con is the current design will not fit in a 2.5" laptop HD form factor. It is easy to assemble however.
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Posted by: techknight on 2013-10-12 10:00:21
I know, I seen that one. but too much bulk IMHO.
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Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2013-10-12 10:10:49
My card arrived today. Just out of curiosity, what ROM revisions did everyone get? Mine is dated 1999, version 2.02A. Hopefully this is new enough that they took into account the 8.4GB barrier.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-12 10:32:15
Old macs have a 2 gig barrier, so it will need partitioning, and of coarse a third party driver (patched apple version may work)
I don't need all the room so I'll stick with one gig for my PowerBook.
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Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2013-10-12 12:38:15
I'm well aware of the 2GB HFS limit, but that is a file system limit, not a hardware limit.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2013-10-12 12:47:42
I am just writing it for if others do a search.
The data sheet for the card sits at 2 gb(give or take), maybe by chance or cost at the time, but it may be limit, It may not. Good luck with trying larger.
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