PB 540c HD upgrade (BlueSCSI vs. OEM & SCSI2SD)

[Fizzbinn]

Thought I'd share my experience with replacing the orginal hard drive in my PowerBook 540c with a BlueSCSI and some tests I did to see how it compares with the original HD and a SCSI2SD I had in my PowerBook 180.

I ordered the PowerBook BlueSCSI Version 4 [F1.TbA.PB.V4] from Tech by Androda, the price point ($45, including bracket) certainly makes this modern SCSI solution more palatable then the SCSI2SD V5 Powerbook Edition by Inertial/Rabbit Hole Computing ($85, no bracket) that I previous bought for my PowerBook 180 and is now discontinued I believe in favor of their newer SCSI2SD V5.5 Powerbook Edition ($85, built-in bracket).

The BlueSCSI setup process is pretty straightforward, I want to say Mac-like in its simplicity compared to the nerdy SCSI2SD utility with all its fun knobs and settings. First impression on booting the PowerBook 540c were positive, definitely feels a lot faster, just like the SCSI2SD felt in my PowerBook 180. All setups other than the OEM HD felt decent to use and not much different from a user prospective.

For some more objective data points I decided to do some boot time, SCSI Director Pro and Norton System Info tests with the same drive file contents (System 7.5.3) and driver (patched Apple Drive Setup 1.7.3) on the OEM IBM 320MB drive, the PowerBook BlueSCSI Version 4 and the SCSI2SD V5 PowerBook Edition pulled from my PB180. Since I also recently acquired a second PowerBook 540c which had a Newer Tech 117MHz PPC upgrade I also ran the BlueSCSI test with that upgrade in place of the stock 33MHz 68LC040.

Boot Times:

Drive	RAM test finish (sec)	Boot finish (sec)
OEM IBM	21	136
PB SCSI2SD v5	21	50
PB BlueSCSI v4	21	46
PB BlueSCSI v4 (PPC )	10	49

SCSI Director Pro:

OEM IBM

PB SCSI2SD v5

PB BlueSCSI v4

PB BlueSCSI v4 (PPC )

Norton System Info:

I thought perhaps the BlueSCSI might benchmark better with the PPC upgrade but I guess enough overhead exists in the 68k emulation and mixed mode where that's not the case. ...of course it could also be the benchmarking tools and OS version I used.

 

[jspending]

Fizzbinn, this is a great analysis! I just installed the BlueSCSI in my 520c this afternoon, and I'm very pleased with my decision.

I should have performed some benchmarking on the noise level of each device, though I'm pretty we know where the OEM IBM drive would net out in that

 

[Paolo B]

I have installed a SCSI2SD v5.0 on a handful of machines (Mac and NeXT) and they all work very fine.
On the “workhorse” SE/30 I use the most, it’s indeed flawless, never missed a beat since I installed one a few years ago.
Set up always the same: 8 Gb micro SD, 4 virtual units from id 0 to id 3, always the same baseline set up file.
So, some time ago, when the original Conner drive eventually gave up, I decided to install one in a Mac Portable, one of my preferred vintage Macs.
I must admit I’ve never managed to get it properly configured and running. As long as the machine is “awake”, there’s no specific issue, but as it goes on sleep, it crashes I’d say 80% of the times upon waking up. I’ve tried different drivers, different OSes, different SCSI2SD set ups, always the same result.
Any suggestion from the experience with other portable machines?