BlueSCSI v2 - DaynaPORT WiFi!

[Glacier]

Greetings
My Mac Plus 4MB arrives tomorrow. Preparatory research is telling me to "BlueSCSI it!". Someone recommended getting the external version, suggesting that WiFi reception would be better than the internal model. I prefer the internal and intend to add the "clipper" attachment cable for same.
What say you all? IS WiFi signal impaired inside the case? Would I be better off with the external version? If I go internal, is there a way to add an antenna to the BlueSCSI should I need to?
Many thanks.
Glacier

 

[djc6]

I haven't had any problems with reception and BlueSCSI DaynaPORT Wifi, but my SE/30 is in the same room as my router. How far are you from your router?

 

[AlexMac]

WiFi reception will be better outside the case. From my experience the external BlueSCSI is more practical, especially if you have more than one Mac. On the other hand it is cleaner to have it internal and if you make the SD card slot available externally one bigger downside dissolves (having to open the Mac case if you want to change something). Performance internal vs. external should be the same on an old Mac. If I recall correctly, that changes with later models.

 

[Glacier]

the router is 10-12 feet and behind an uninsulated wall from where the Plus will be. All my other WiFi enabled machines work just fine at 2.4 and 5 GHz. My wife's machine is 50 feet and three walls away and she has no problem either. I won't be using the BlueSCSI on any other machine, thus the lean to putting it under the hood.
Thanks for your responses, guys.

 

[AlexMac]

Then you should go for the cleaner internal solution. Please share your experience if the reception is good and have a lot of fun with your 'new' Mac Plus. Such a nice machine!

 

[Glacier]

Thanks for your prompting. I may wait a little bit to dive into all things Plus. Sitting on my desk right now is a SATA to IDE converter card and an SSD to replace the hard drive in my iBook G3 900 14". I am LOVING this six pound notebook (about the same as my 2015 MacBook Pro.) That will be a chore, having to dig through almost every component to get to the drive. I wonder if the Apple guys put the drive on the floor, then built the rest of the iBook around it. (Reminds me of my old Volvos, the 24X series. Replacing the heater motor involved a full day's mechanic's skill.)

 

[AlexMac]

Haha, yes. I never opened one of these iBooks personally. Just a few Titanium and Aluminum PowerBooks. What I had to do is crack open the SSD enclosure as the whole SSD would never fit into the case when used with the IDE converter. But that was no problem after initial hesitation. The actual SSD was much shorter than I had expected. Good luck

 

[Glacier]

Yeah. The SSD is less than half the size of the card in length and about two-thirds in width. The card came with a case. Conventional wisdom is "Leave the case off." I thought of buying a roll of Kapton tape to ensure there's no metal-to-metal contact, but I'm too cheap. I'll find a good, high-temperature-safe, replacement amidst all the detritus in my shop.

 

[eric]

@RetroTechChris wrote a packet driver for the BlueSCSI in DOS, and has more plans for it, stay tuned! We'll update our DOS premade SCSI images soon!

GitHub - cml37/daynaport-dos-packet-driver

Contribute to cml37/daynaport-dos-packet-driver development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Mk.558]

Got CD-ROM?

I can vouch for the BlueSCSI external. Assuming it's not doing the self-nuking of the SD card, it is certainly convenient. Make sure you have a DB25 SCSI cable to go with it because a direct connection is not always possible on a number of machines without removing the 3D printed case, and sometimes not even with that off.

When talking about WiFi performance, remember that the antennas are very small and cannot compete with a proper high performance antenna. Board mounted antennas compromise performance for packaging. A proper dipole antenna for 2.4GHz band is roughly 60mm long, which there are tricks to get more out of a compact package. Similarly, if you are familiar with radio principles, a rubber ducky cannot compete in performance to a tuned whip antenna for handheld transceivers.

 

[eric]

FWIW any SD issues have been fixed for a while now, please update to the latest firmware if you haven't. I was a tough one as no one could reproduce it, one out of my 50+ machines could reproduce the bug and I actually shipped it to @Androda for analysis with his logic analyzer. No software is perfect but once we can reproduce something we'll fix it. We only had 10 people actually report any SD issues, so I don't believe it was wide spread. If you were affected I do apologize - and always a good reminder to keep backups, even when everything is working well.

I'll also say with the latest DB25 2024.01a and latest case by @Javmast3r it fits on all my macs. If there is a specific one please do let us know. I can't have every Macintosh model

RE: wifi antenna, ya, I do wish the RM2 module had a way to add some 3rd party antenna, just seems like the pi foundation isn't interested in that.

I did note in your networking guide it has some info about difficulties installing daynaport on system 6 - I'll say we've updated the docs, image, and I think it works pretty smoothly now. Most people I help are on system 6 and the real issue is MacTCP's UI elements not working as expected (or people unfamiliar with what an IP address is)

Anyways just really awesome to see people rally around and build new network drivers for DOS, Atari, Amiga, etc for BlueSCSI - takes a community!

 

[Mk.558]

FWIW any SD issues have been fixed for a while now, please update to the latest firmware if you haven't. I was a tough one as no one could reproduce it, one out of my 50+ machines could reproduce the bug and I actually shipped it to @Androda for analysis with his logic analyzer. No software is perfect but once we can reproduce something we'll fix it. We only had 10 people actually report any SD issues, so I don't believe it was wide spread. If you were affected I do apologize - and always a good reminder to keep backups, even when everything is working well.

I had it happen on a Quadra 650 and a Quadra 610. The 650 was the most embarrassing one, because I was borrowing it from volvo242 and checking out 8.1 versus 10.14 in a library. It lasted less than 5 minutes before nuking itself and I didn't have anything else to substitute for it. Ended being forced to loan it for a longer time, and then the logic board died of something. It would do a weird garbled bong and just stop. Cleaned the board and no change. For what it is, the Q650 has a complicated rat's nest of tiny thin traces all over the board, I pity the poor soul who has to deal with that thing if it dies because with so many traces and vias all over the place.

Still feel bad about it.

Anyways the firmware has been updated but I haven't been using any 040 machines recently. On the SE/30 and IIci it worked fine, no problems, and on the PM G3 it was fine with those, didn't have that self-nuking thing. However I do commend your efforts and once I became aware of it and had multiple nukes per day I kept ready backups and eventually stopped using the SD Card Formatter since it took too long to format it after it would nuke itself.

FWIW I bought two internal models recently because I know my HDDs are going to die eventually and with ... ahem ... looks around Reasons, it's probably better to buy now than later, and I did look at other stuff and they're easily double the price, but maybe they're also twice as good. But for a quick storage solution, I'd say the BlueSCSI is the way to go.

RE: wifi antenna, ya, I do wish the RM2 module had a way to add some 3rd party antenna, just seems like the pi foundation isn't interested in that.

I did note in your networking guide it has some info about difficulties installing daynaport on system 6 - I'll say we've updated the docs, image, and I think it works pretty smoothly now. Most people I help are on system 6 and the real issue is MacTCP's UI elements not working as expected (or people unfamiliar with what an IP address is)

Yeah I don't know what that's about but what can you do. Embedded traces are used on your phone and all, and have been for 20 years now, they're nothing really new. I just don't use WiFi at home at all and don't need it, but it's one of those things that it's better to have and not need than the other way around.

Feel free to refer them to my guide. Even if they can't understand my 5th grade level writing "skill" there's still plenty of images and documentation that shows exactly how to set it up and what each element is.

 

[JDW]

Folks, our awesome forum member @techknight has posted a new video showing the required DIODE MOD for using a BlueSCSI externally on a Macintosh Portable 5126 here:

 

[tiktok4321]

FWIW any SD issues have been fixed for a while now, please update to the latest firmware if you haven't. I was a tough one as no one could reproduce it, one out of my 50+ machines could reproduce the bug and I actually shipped it to @Androda for analysis with his logic analyzer. No software is perfect but once we can reproduce something we'll fix it. We only had 10 people actually report any SD issues, so I don't believe it was wide spread. If you were affected I do apologize - and always a good reminder to keep backups, even when everything is working well.

I'll also say with the latest DB25 2024.01a and latest case by @Javmast3r it fits on all my macs. If there is a specific one please do let us know. I can't have every Macintosh model

RE: wifi antenna, ya, I do wish the RM2 module had a way to add some 3rd party antenna, just seems like the pi foundation isn't interested in that.

I did note in your networking guide it has some info about difficulties installing daynaport on system 6 - I'll say we've updated the docs, image, and I think it works pretty smoothly now. Most people I help are on system 6 and the real issue is MacTCP's UI elements not working as expected (or people unfamiliar with what an IP address is)

Anyways just really awesome to see people rally around and build new network drivers for DOS, Atari, Amiga, etc for BlueSCSI - takes a community!

Hi Eric. Thanks for replying on Captain's Quarters II BBS!
Here is the log file I have:

Platform: BlueSCSI (Pico2/W)
FW Version: 2026.04.27-rel Apr 28 2026 00:34:35
Flash chip size: 4096 kB
=== Bootloader Log ===
[0ms] Bootloader version: Apr 28 2026 00:34:19 BlueSCSI
[0ms] Looking for firmware: BlueSCSI_Pico_2_DaynaPORT*.bin
[40ms] Bootloader continuing to main firmware
=== End Bootloader Log ===
Reclock Pico 2/2W based boards to standardized speed
Initial Clock set to 150MHz
Reclocking the MCU to 155MHz
Setting the SDIO clock to 26MHz
After reclocking, system reports clock set to 155MHz

=== SD Card Info ===
SD card detected, FAT32 volume size: 15192 MB
SD Name: SD, MID: 0xFE, OID: "42" (0x34 0x32)

=== Global Config ===
Reading configuration from bluescsi.ini

=== Finding images ===
=== Finding images in / ===
== Opening /HD0-OpenRetroSCSI-7.1.hda for ID:0 LUN:0
---- Configuring as disk drive
== Opening /CD2 StuffIt-Expander-4-0-2.iso for ID:2 LUN:0
---- Configuring as CD-ROM drive
== Opening /HD1 BlueSCSI Bootstrap.hda for ID:1 LUN:0
---- Configuring as disk drive
== Opening /FD3 StuffIt Expander 4.0.2.dsk for ID:3 LUN:0
---- Configuring as floppy drive

== Platform supports ROM drive up to 2848 kB

=== Configured SCSI Devices ===
ID: 0, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 512000kB
ID: 1, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 524336kB
ID: 2, BlockSize: 2048, Type: Optical, Quirks: Apple, Size: 400kB, Removable
ID: 3, BlockSize: 512, Type: Floppy1.4MB, Quirks: Apple, Size: 1440kB, Removable

ID: 2, Eject button: #1
ID: 3, Eject button: #2

Clock set to: 155MHz
Initialization complete!
Disabling status LED
INFO: Pico Voltage: 3.276V.

Maybe there's something with regards to this: BlueSCSI_Pico_2_DaynaPORT*.bin?

 

[eric]

As noted you need to make a blank file called "NE4.hda" or similar to have any wifi stuff start. This file indicates to the bluescsi that it should emulate a NEtworkign device on (in this case) ID 4. Once you do that you'll have a better time

Maybe there's something with regards to this: BlueSCSI_Pico_2_DaynaPORT*.bin?

Not sure what that means - that log item is just saying the bootloader didnt find an update, safe to ignore if you're not updating.

 

[tiktok4321]

As noted you need to make a blank file called "NE4.hda" or similar to have any wifi stuff start. This file indicates to the bluescsi that it should emulate a NEtworkign device on (in this case) ID 4. Once you do that you'll have a better time


Not sure what that means - that log item is just saying the bootloader didnt find an update, safe to ignore if you're not updating.

The NE4.hda file is there. Wonder why the log doesn’t show it.

 

[tiktok4321]

Just deleted all unnecessary images including log file. Ensured NE4.hda is onboard. New log file still can't see NE4.hda.

Platform: BlueSCSI (Pico2/W)
FW Version: 2026.04.27-rel Apr 28 2026 00:34:35
Flash chip size: 4096 kB
=== Bootloader Log ===
[0ms] Bootloader version: Apr 28 2026 00:34:19 BlueSCSI
[0ms] Looking for firmware: BlueSCSI_Pico_2_DaynaPORT*.bin
[41ms] Bootloader continuing to main firmware
=== End Bootloader Log ===
Reclock Pico 2/2W based boards to standardized speed
Initial Clock set to 150MHz
Reclocking the MCU to 155MHz
Setting the SDIO clock to 26MHz
After reclocking, system reports clock set to 155MHz

=== SD Card Info ===
SD card detected, FAT32 volume size: 15192 MB
SD Name: SD, MID: 0xFE, OID: "42" (0x34 0x32)

=== Global Config ===
Reading configuration from bluescsi.ini

=== Finding images ===
=== Finding images in / ===
== Opening /HD0-OpenRetroSCSI-7.1.hda for ID:0 LUN:0
---- Configuring as disk drive
== Opening /HD1 BlueSCSI Bootstrap.hda for ID:1 LUN:0
---- Configuring as disk drive

== Platform supports ROM drive up to 2848 kB

=== Configured SCSI Devices ===
ID: 0, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 512000kB
ID: 1, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 524336kB

Clock set to: 155MHz
Initialization complete!
Disabling status LED
INFO: Pico Voltage: 3.307V.

bluescsi.ini file:

Note: I did correct the ne4.hda file - it had a hidden extension but I removed it. Tried again. Still not detected.

 

[eric]

Note: I did correct the ne4.hda file - it had a hidden extension but I removed it. Tried again. Still not detected.

Unfortunately modern OS's think they're smarter then you and hide extensions - you actually have a file named "NE4.hda.rtf" but macOS is hiding extensions - you can tell this by the "type" column saying "RTF Document" - once you show file extensions and make it "NE4.hda" then it'll show up in the log.

 

[tiktok4321]

Unfortunately modern OS's think they're smarter then you and hide extensions - you actually have a file named "NE4.hda.rtf" but macOS is hiding extensions - you can tell this by the "type" column saying "RTF Document" - once you show file extensions and make it "NE4.hda" then it'll show up in the log.

Yes - I noted that at the end of my text. I caught that, corrected and still same result.

 

[eric]

If the file is there I'd be logged - can you please validate in the terminal what the actual contents are? You could do something like "ls -lah /Volumes/sdcardnamehere/" - also please enable debug logging.