Old PowerBook SCSI hard drives

--On Friday, May 6, 2005 3:37 PM -0700 "m.c. schraefel" <mcthe-mind.com>
wrote:

> So i have an old powerbook scsi harddrive from a pb160 that was in a case
> by APS Technologies. The case, alas, has died, and i'd like to get the
> data from the drive.

There is nothing "magical" about internal vs. external SCSI interfaces.
They are electrically identical (i.e. just the plugs are different). If
"the case" has failed, that means almost certainly the power supply. (Can
you hear the drive spin? If not, it's virtually always the power.)

So you can either replace the power supply, or rig some temporary harness
to last until you get your data off. The details would depend on what plugs
your drive has in the back (this varied over the years).

> I have stymied just about any techie i've asked for an adaptor that will
> let me connect the 2.5 inch scsi to a regular scsi card. Lots of these
> adaptors exist for ide drives, but not for scsi it seems: "They don't
> make 2.5 inch scsi drives" i was told as i held mine out for inspection.

IDE drives are very different; there's no such thing as "external IDE", so
IDE drives are converted (by an actual circuit board) to SCSI or FireWire
or USB. While there are adapters that convert SCSI to FireWire, they are
rather expensive for stop-gap use. (And I wouldn't trust my drive to
someone who doesn't believe in the existence 2.5" SCSI drives. :-)

So we'd need a picture of the back of the (internal) drive, or a suitable
description. Or, in a pinch, what powerbook this came from originally.

Cheers
  -- perry
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Perry The Cynic perrycynic.org
To a blind optimist, an optimistic realist must seem like an Accursed Cynic.