powebook 1400c freezes when I have an HDI-30 cable plugged in

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indrora

New Tinkerer
Mar 9, 2025
2
0
1
I bought a 1400c off ebay and discovered that a) it has a working drive and b) it has the dissertation of a dead man on it. I'd like to get the data off it and get it to his living relatives.

So I have two goals:

* Extricate data off the current hd
* Put a new hdd in for a fresh installation

To get a fresh install, I have a CF-IDE adapter and a bluescsi db25 + db25-hdi30 cable. Problem: Plugging in the cable and rescanning the bus causes my powerbook to just... Stop. If I remove the cable, it suddenly regains consciousness and continues merrily along.

The cable was from IEC: https://iec.net/product/scsi-cable-apple-power-book-hdi30-male-to-db25-female-2-foot/

Is this just a known thing that some of these cables are junk and don't work right? Or are they expecting scsi termination that the bluescsi just can't do?
 

indrora

New Tinkerer
Mar 9, 2025
2
0
1
Yeah I think something's up with my HDI-30 cable; It won't even boot when I plug in the cable (let alone any peripheral) attached. Peeking inside the connector, it looks like a back alley hackjob with loose wires, clearly a 50 pin centronics to db25 conversion done badly.

I've gotten one of the angled adapters on the way so I'll find out then.
 

croissantking

Tinkerer
Feb 7, 2023
112
52
28
Please don’t hot plug SCSI devices - it’s not designed for that and you could do serious damage.

BlueSCSI won’t run off the back of a PowerBook as it doesn’t provide the termination power needed. You might be able to plug in a USB cable to provide power that way?