Dan Knight
- 2006.06.16
Compact Flash in an Older Mac or PowerBook
After reading Compact Flash for
Vintage Macs in Tuesday's mailbag, "Goff Family" writes:
Dan,
You might want to look into this:
ACARD AEC-7720UM Ultra SCSI-to-IDE Bridge, Supports IDE devices attached to SCSI bus, for Mac.
Compact Flash cards are IDE devices, so a simple SCSI to IDE
adapter should do the trick. This card plugs into the SCSI
controller on your Mac motherboard, and then you can plug IDE
drives, including a Compact Flash Card, into the IDE connector.
I haven't used this product, but I may consider picking one up
for my PowerBook 170. It would be very
cool to run a 1 GB Compact Flash card in the laptop.
On a similarly related topic, I've been looking into the
possibility of upgrading my old 800
MHz iLamp iMac by swapping out the motherboard with an Intel Core Duo Mac mini motherboard. The Mac
mini board is small enough to mount in the iLamp case. If I ever
get around to actually performing the experiment, I'll let you know
how it works out.
Acard makes some clever hardware. Designed to work
transparently and make an IDE or ATA device work just like a SCSI
drive, it looks like the US$70 AEC-7720U connects to a standard
internal SCSI cable (the AEC-7720UW uses ultrawide SCSI) and plugs
into the IDE port on the new drive.
You'd also need to add an IDE to Compact Flash
adapter, such as this US$20
IDE Compact Flash Adapter with Mounting Plate, and then cross
your fingers that you'll be able to format it as a bootable
drive.
For about $90 plus shipping and the cost of a CF
card (assuming you don't already have one floating around), this
might work. Both devices claim to be transparent and require no
drivers.
Keep me posted on your Intel iLamp project.
Cost Effective SCSI to CF Adapter
Solutions
Darren Fleishman writes:
This actually shouldn't be so hard to do, given the persistent
compatibility of old standards.
Here is probably your best
bet. The site says it's new, but I think it's used - but only $35 +
the cost of a PCMCIA-CF adapter (usually $10-15), it's probably a
slam dunk. It's external, so just plug it into the SCSI device
chain, plug it in, and it should be ready to go. Good luck with
reterminating the SCSI chain, and make sure you get a PCMCIA based
adapter - a CardBus-only adapter might not work.
http://secure.oswaltsystems.net/gosurplus/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=PCMCIA.MCDISK
Other similar options:
This one actually says it works with System 7 on one of the Web
pages, and the company actually makes (made?) both internal and
external versions - use w/ a PCMCIA-CF card, and you should be all
set (in theory anyway). I believe the first version from
oswaltsystems is actually a repackaged version of these - so the
System 7 compatibility should apply.
Here's another option very likely to work although I bet this is
a bit of overkill:
http://www.redrocktech.com/datasheets/RRTC-1SP-LWa.pdf#search='SCSI%20PCMCIA%20adapter'
You could also use a SCSI-IDE adapter in conjunction w/ a IDE-CF
adapter. Could work....
Drivers shouldn't be an issue, as the Mac should see it as a
SCSI device waiting to be formatted. (I say this without any way to
test it.) Power to all three devices could be a problem, however -
the SCSI-IDE and IDE-CF adapters usually need a PC style floppy
power source, and the draw of all three devices may be too much for
a standard old Mac Plus power supply if you could get the pinouts
to work. Pulling a cheap ATX power supply would be an option to
power everything up - you probably could salvage one out of an
1997-1998 vintage PC from a thrift store. The whole thing is
probably doable, but it seems like lots of work and kind of
expensive (at least $100 for the whole thing) when the other
alternatives are seem very simple to use - but potentially could be
used internally if you can get the wiring right. Stealth mod,
anyone?
You may be tempted to use virtual memory (VM) with this setup.
If it works, it will be very fast with VM speeds that far exceed
access times on a disk-based swapfile, but this approach could
"wear out" your CF card quickly.
Most flash memory is rated for about 10,000 write cycles, which
is plenty for pictures, MP3s, and other more or less static files.
However, VM does many writes as it pages out memory to disk, so
depending on usage patterns, those 10,000 writes may get used up
quickly. The solution should be fine for basic storage needs, but
you shouldn't use it as a cache or swap file if the life span of
the card is important. In a pinch, it would be a fine solution to
use VM to run a memory hog program on a limited machine, but
constant reliance on this as a solution will lead to the reasonably
quick failure of most CF cards.
Some cards may not be limited this way - if VM is important to
you, it would be worthwhile to look into this issue.
BTW, Windows Vista actually includes paging out to flash memory
as a feature to enhance performance. However, Vista uses the
storage as a cache for a swapfile on the hard drive - not as a swap
file itself. If the cache gets corrupted due to the write cycle
issue - no big deal, the VM system just pulls the info off the
drive. Older Mac VM systems are not nearly this robust - another
reason why VM on the CF card isn't the best idea.
Also, CF and other flash memory tend not to be the most durable
storage mediums - so you should consider backing the card up to
conventional storage regularly.
At US$35, the Mosaic device sounds like the best
option yet. External with its own power supply, very affordable,
and it looks fairly compact. The only possible drawback is that it
mentions a 64 MB address range (see below). Even that would be
plenty for use with a Mac Plus, SE, etc.
It looks like the MCDISK-D-3S should be able to access up to
4 GB, if the following link is true...
http://www.mpl.ch/t7110.html
The key is "PC-ATA" compatibility. The C version may also be
able be compatible, but it is not specified. If you are ordering
this, you probably should go with the D version.
As long as the PCMCIA-CF card emulates a "PC-ATA" card,
4 GB should be the upper bound w/ the D version (I think all
of them do). I believe the 64 MB limit comes into play with the
older flash PCMCIA cards--like the cards used in the Newton.
Thanks for the info. 4 GB should be plenty
for almost any vintage Mac or PowerBook. I remember when a 40 MB
drive on my Mac Plus seemed positively huge....
Compact Flash, Macs, and PCs
Darren Fleishman writes:
Sorry to keep bugging you w/ this, but I've gotten interested in
doing this with my IIcx and LC.
Here's something that will be very useful to transfer the card
between Mac and PC's. It's a patch for PC Exchange to allow PC
formatted cards to be read by the Mac. I'm not 100% sure this is
necessary, but its nice to know its available.
Darren
http://www.mpl.ch/DOCs/pcex-pat-doc.pdf
PowerBook 1400 CD-RW Upgrade Problems
In response to Replacing or
Upgrading the Optical Drive in Your PowerBook G3 or 1400, Nick
Vetter says:
Dear Sir:
Just read an article by Mr. Rivera, however, I would like to
know if anyone knows of specific models of CD-RW that will work in
a PowerBook 1400 for DVD/CD-RW capacity.
He states that any will work, but I can assure you that having
tried, that is certainly not the case.
Thanks,
Nick Vetter
PB 1400 die-hard
Please reread the article. Rivera never says every
drive will work. In fact, he only says it "should work" in general
and that "chances are" a drive pulled from a Windows laptop will
work.
I haven't experimented with this myself, but
Daniel
Kraeuter (Macdan) states: "PBs 1400 and Lombard/Pismo are
capable of easily upgrading their original Apple optical EBMs to
CD-R/W, combo DVD/CD-RW and DVD-R/W/CDRW drives." And further that
it must have Micro 50 ATAPI connector.
Macdan also reports that while all the drives he
tried worked as readers, neither of the CD-RW drives he tried would
burn discs with Toast, Disk Burner, Disk Copy, or iTunes 1 or 2. He
has heard reports that B's Recorder Gold software should do the
job, but he hasn't been able to buy a copy.
Rivera tells me this worked for him, and I've
emailed him to ask for more details. However, since he is in the
armed services, he may not be able to respond for a while.
Web Incompatibily Problems
Nick, a.k.a. Sonic Purity, writes:
Topic #1
I believe you (Dan)
wrote:
There's one huge problem on the Internet - website
developers who believe making things work for 80-90% of their
visitors (Internet Explorer on Windows) is good enough. Almost
every month you'll see an article on the Web about yet another bank
that has updated its online access and locked out Mac users.
The problem is compounded by a multitude of
platforms: Windows 98, Linux, the classic Mac OS, different
versions of Netscape and IE, alternative browsers (FireFox, Opera,
iCab, OmniWeb, etc.), and so forth. Site such as PayPal, banks, and
credit unions need to be very secure, and no all platforms are
secure enough.
In the end, we can't expect the Net to stand still
and continue to support outdated, less secure browsers forever.
While old Macs may last and last, security is a far greater concern
today than it was 5 or 10 years ago, and most old software will
never be updated to meet today's security needs.
I don't know exactly what's going on with PayPal
and your credit union. Odds are they don't have a classic Mac OS
computer and iCab for testing purposes; they may not even test on a
modern OS X Mac for that matter. If they follow industry standards,
it should be possible to create a website that works with virtually
any platform, but too often they just want to make it work for most
users and don't have the resources to support older platforms like
iCab on the classic Mac OS.
Responding to the readership, I now type:
Welcome to one of my very favorite rants! Fortunately, I find
there is good news:
1) Many Windows users are abandoning IE for the more
standards-compliant Firefox (so I have read). So those sites too
lazy/stupid/ignorant to follow the W3C standards and who design for
the majority are being pushed to support Firefox which, since it is
fairly standards-compliant, means the sites have to do more things
correctly, and should work better in other standards-compliant
browsers like iCab.
2) Alexander Clauss continues to develop iCab and seems to be
doing pretty well supporting at least the latter incarnations of
the vintage Mac OS and the Macs that use it. (True, the current
iCab 3 beta is dog-slow on this 9600/350 and similar hardware, yet I remain
hopeful that the eventual speed optimization will restore
usability.) I have found him to be very receptive to continuing to
fine-tune iCab to work as well as possible in the ocean of horrible
HTML out there. In my testing, I have found that, with the
exception of some font and text entry box issues, whatever problems
iCab Classic has with certain web pages will also be problematic in
the same way with iCab X, which increases the odds that the
problems will be fixed.
Hopefully others besides me have politely and gently driven home
the point to Mr. Clauss that while iCab may be a 4th or 5th string
player in OSeX Land, it is The Only Game In Town in Vintage Mac OS
Land, and iCab's overall success is tied in to its continuing to
support as many Vintage Mac OS configurations as it reasonably can.
For those who are not already registered iCab users, registering
and paying for iCab and including a message that you are doing so
thanks to iCab's Vintage Mac OS support should help our cause
. . . and let you use slow, yet more functional, iCab 3
betas.
As one of the legion of iCab beta testers around the world, I
can report that all the recent iCab 3 betas have been very stable
and usable on this 9600/350 running OS 9.2.2 (with some updated
components from OS X Classic installs) via OS 9 Helper.
Painfully slow, yet it works in places where iCab 2.latest will
not.
While neither of us in this household have made the exact
transaction Clarisse needed to make, PayPal has continued to work
for us.
As part of trying to make the world better, I often will write a
kind and polite message to the webmaster of a site with unusably
bad HTML. Using my position and knowledge as a Mac consultant who
specializes in helping folks keep older Mac systems viable, I point
out that 1) Following W3C standards is best for everyone, and 2) If
they must keep coding for specific browsers, their job is now
easier for older Macs: Support iCab. Forget the rest. I think my
last client/friend/family member that was still using MSIE 5.1.7
had to give up recently, due to that final Vintage Mac OS version
being no longer suitable for some sites they needed to reach.
Nearly all of my clients/friends/family have been thrilled to
use iCab once they find how much better it works than the IE or
Netscape they were formerly using. But you folks know that....
Topic #2
I find it sadly ironic that the LEM pages I visited today make
iCab frown. I did not bother to check whether the errors belong to
LEM or to linked entities.
Topic #3
I was reading the biography of Ted Hodges
and noticed that he wrote that you seemed to have a dearth of
writers writing about the older hardware. Do you need any more?
This 9600/350 running 9.2.2+ remains my "daily driver" for the
near-term future, at least. Any topics you want me to write about?
(Oh, I worked at Apple for about 1-1/2 years, from summer 1996 to
winter 1997. QA: Mass Storage Integration Quality, Cupertino.)
I admit to not being a regular LEM reader these days
. . . I stopped years ago, probably around the time you
decided to start obfuscating the email addresses with the
ampersanded character entity strings. I was still using Cyberdog 2 as my
primary browser browser then, and those strings of entities trip a
Cyberdog bug which makes it hurl. It remains sadly ironic to me
that a low-end Macintosh site has (?had?) HTML that breaks low-end
browsers.
While it is weeks between times I power up my Mac Plus, it remains hooked up on
tertiary standby for Internet and word processing purposes. There
are a good 8 to 10 (maybe more . . . I have not counted
recently) beige Macs around here, plus some PB 1xxes. In fact,
there were no computers from this millennium in this household
until last November, when my True Love bought a new 15" PB G4 DL,
and this March when I wound up being paid in part with a
Sawtooth.
Thanks for your dedicated efforts keeping LEM going for so long.
May you and it continue to do so for a long time to come!
Best Wishes,
Sonic (known to his brother as Nick)
Thanks for your comments, Nick.
I'm glad to hear that iCab is working so well for
you, and I hope more will become paid up members so they can use
iCab 3.x with their vintage Macs.
Yes, I realize that LEM's design is broken in iCab
3.x - but it works in Safari, Firefox, Opera, IE for Mac, OmniWeb,
Konqueror and some other Linux browsers, and IE 6 for Windows - the
reason I bought a WinXP laptop a year ago. It even worked in
Cyberdog when I was fiddling around with it a few months back.
Low End Mac's design is a bit of a kludge. The
basic design was started in Claris Home Page, modified to use CSS,
converted from HTML to XHTML, and cleaned up a bit by hand in the
process. The core pages are pretty much standards compliant. What's
tripping up iCab is the ads, and I have no control over the way
they're coded.
As for protecting email addresses, we've tried
several different things over the years. One some of the older
pages, we still have "mailto:" instead of "mailto:" links,
but we switched to using JavaScript over a year ago. I hope that
doesn't trip up Cyberdog.
As for writers covering the low end, we made a big
effort to find new writers last fall, adding about a dozen to our
roster. I'm very excited to see the renewed focus on pre-G3 gear,
and I'm very tempted to try to get a flash drive-based setup going
for my ancient Mac Plus, SE, or SE/30.
Nick also writes:
As for protecting email addresses, we've tried
several different things over the years. One some of the older
pages, we still have "mailto:" instead of "mailto:" links,
but we switched to using JavaScript over a year ago. I hope that
doesn't trip up Cyberdog.
It is no help to Cyberdog, because Cyberdog lacks JavaScript
entirely.
However it is a huge improvement over the ampersand
entities: at least Cyberdog displays the page with the JS method,
even though there is no way to get to the address. I think that is
better than not being able to see any LEM page (with the ampersand
entities)!
Thanking you for your reply and celebrating the email change
that once again allows Cyberdog to read LEM,
Nick
Chooses aggressive spam filtering over obfuscating his website
email addresses.
Problem with Google Groups Defaulting to 'No Mail'
After running into problems with Google Groups and reading
the FAQ for our Vintage Mac
list, Peter Falus writes:
Dear Dan,
Sorry to contact you about not a Low End Mac question (although
I write from a Mac).
I also use Google Groups, and a few month ago the default
subscription option was changed to 'no email' as you described. Of
course it is very annoying that the users sign up, then they do not
get emails. How can i change this setting?
Again sorry to contact you about it, but no other page mentions
this issue.
Thank you,
Peter
Go to the group and click on "Manage".
Click the "Invite or Add Members link".
This is the page that causes the problem. Every
time I use this page, it wants to set the default to "No Email"!
Change that, and you're all set until the next time you manually
add someone.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
