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One page document showing the pin layout for easily fabricating a 34 pin to 50 pin SCSI adapter for the Mac Portable.

The document provides a description of the “track 0” misalignment issue that plagues vintage floppy disk drives and suggests a simple procedure for fixing it. Applicable to all Mac floppy drives (400k, 800k, 1.4M).

Strange as it might sound, but as far as I remember not all the combinations of motherboard / ribbon cable / floppy drive are compatible. Don’t remember exactly the details, but there are “yellow” and “red” ribbon cables. As for the misalignment of the optical sensor, a couple of posts above...

Hello Stephen, glad to read you find it useful. I was not aware of the “Resource” …resource, I will surely upload the PDF. Paolo

Ehm, yes, of course… I completely forgot about it, thanks for reminding me. I must admit I did the upgrade a long time ago and did not remember hacking plain 7.5 after installing new ROMs, I thought it was necessary only for unsupported OSs , from 7.6 on. So, it now works fine.

Hi All, A question for the experts… I’m trying to install a MO drive in a SE/30 in place of the floppy, hardware-wise it’s OK, I’m now checking the functionality. As long as it’s just a matter of using the MO as a storage disk, there’s no issue. However, when it comes to booting from a MO disk...

Totally agree! Btw, on my SE/30 with upgraded clean 32 bit rom I have SCSI2SD with 4 SCSI IDs, one of which is dedicated to a OS 8.1 installation. Works just fine.

Hi All, Should any of you be interested, I finally managed to get a decently neat installation of a MO drive in place of the internal floppy in a SE/30. Not a super easy one, but doable. Out of the few units I have around, I opted for a Fujitsu M2513A 640Mb SCSI: 1) it’s from 1997, not exactly...

I would not alter the hardware of the 512k and keep it as original as possible. It’s the first “usable” Mac, there are so many things you can do with it without upgrading it to something it was not. As for the 400k drive, I personally love them, they are so “musical” :-) The zero track alignment...

It happened to me with a few keyboards. Desolder / disassemble / clean / check / solder the switch back is my way to go.

Silica doesn’t last forever, it’s much easier to keep the machine in a sealed bag.

I store my PB170 vacuum bagged in one of those zipped bags for saving wardrobe space, along with one humidity absorbing pouch. You just need to be careful, as vacuum is really powerful and you don’t want to exaggerate with it.

Excellent video, thanks! I managed to recover my Pb 170 by vacuum bagging it along with silica pouches for a long, long time (I mean: months). When I got the unit, the (severe) tunnel effect was appearing after just a few minutes. Nowadays I get bored at pretending I have to do something with...

Should be just a matter of unlatching the connector at the bottom and crimp in a new ribbon cable.

Grazie! Glad to read you find it useful :)

That’s indeed a great video, thanks! One question, though... I assume this mod will only work along with a Mystic upgrade. But how about plain CC or CC II logic board? Shall I go for the more invasive “Hi Res” mod?

Here some slides I put together explaining the ”zero track alignment“ procedure. As far as my experience goes, 100% success rate in recovering “misaligned” drives. I hope it can help. Zero Track Alignment

Here’s the set up (in the background, the venerable Canon MO Drive keeps a fatherly eye on the two youngsters…)

Two 640 Mb Fujitsu drives, MCF3064SS (Aug 1999, the one that arrived with broken gears), and a M2513A6R (May 1998). They are now housed into Fujitsu 243 (fan less!) and 241 (very noisy fan) SCSI case respectively, both of which nicely match the “snow white” of the Macs. Configuring the dip...

So, here’s the fix. The two pieces bonded back together with epoxy and laminated on top of a 0.2 mm Al sheet. The metal layer now bears the mechanical stress, the plastic pieces ensure the fit. After a good clean and lubrication, the MO unit is now again fully functional and back in the fanless...