I’ve been back into vintage Mac for 22 months now. Starting from the beginning, I recognized I needed a good bridging machine to get the job done.
I started with my Power Macintosh Digital Audio Dual CPU 533mhz, with its 768MB of RAM and built-in CD burner, running dual boot Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11.
Getting files and operating system software from places like Macintosh Garden onto an older Mac, like the IIfx for example, can be challenging.
So I remembered my old school days and the ease of use of burning CDs. Well, easy there. Not so fast. Burning a CD of downloaded files from Mac OS X Tiger and trying to run them on System 7.0.1 on a IIfx can be a bit of a trial and error. Especially since those older CDROM drives on an old Mac don’t like CDRW media and don’t like ones burned at above 8x usually.
That was a lesson in patience, and cost. I had bought an Apple CD 600, a pack of blank CDR and burned a bunch of toasters.
Then I had a thought: what if I could write to an old media using a modern drive that could be read on a drive from the 90s? That’s where the Zip came into play.
I picked up a SCSI zip 100 drive, some brand new disks, and a USB zip 100. Altogether less cost than the Apple CD 600 and a pack of blank disks, to be honest.
That worked great. Downloading files from the internet using TenFourFox on that G4 really did the trick.
Except for one thing: size and speed. My Zip was limited to 100MB. Which is fine if you’re using it as a system boot volume and a few apps. But you can’t run MYST off of it.
Enter the Jaz drive. 1GB removable hard disk cartridges, faster than most stock hard drives found in Macintosh computers of the 90s, and readily available. The cost of a single Jaz drive was about $45. A pack of brand new disks set me back about $15 USD for 3. Not exactly breaking the bank.
A SCSI card for my G4 was only $20. So add another Jaz drive for about $45 again, and you’re just over $100 USD.
In January 2021 I rediscovered magneto optical and fell in love. I picked up a few different kinds of drives and disks, and even got an IDE Fujitsu 1.3 GB MO for the internal drive bay, using an Apple Zip bezel (the measurements are identical between zip and mo). So now my G4 had Zip 100, Magneto Optical 1300, and Jaz 1GB.
My G4 had a Firmtek SATA card in it, and I was booting from an Intel data center rated SSD until just a few weeks ago. Suddenly I was getting drive corruption for no real reason. Replacing the drive didn’t help either.
Time for the upgrade: I had bought a Dual Core 2.3 GHz Power Mac G5 (with PCI Express) just for this purpose a year ago, and it was time to get it setup and going. This is the fastest Mac that can run 68k software without being liquid cooled (it’s air cooled).
For some reason I had issues getting the G5 to recognize any drives. I would boot the 10.4.6 installer and it would see a drive. I’d install OS X on it, reboot, and nothing. Rinse repeat for 3 solid days I cried vintage tears of pain like I was dealing with SCSI termination issues.
I tried many different drives including ones from other G5’s that were working. I don’t know what was going on or what happened but nothing was working. Even brand new drives I had on my shelf. Infuriating.
I took a break for a day, and then revisited it. I stuck in a WD 1TB SATA drive that came working from one of my Mac Pros. The installer saw it, formatted it, and …. Refused to boot from it. So I pulled it out and decided to try something: I put a jumper on the pins to set its speed to SATA 1/2. This reduced its connection speed from 3/6Gbps to 1.5/3Gbps. The actual result I’m unsure of because the Mac only reports 1.5Gbps.
I fired it up, and it instantly went into the OS X Tiger 10.4.6 I had installed on it. PROGRESS!!
So here’s where I tried something risky: I took my 2TB drive out of my G4, put it into the lower bay, without applying the jumper, and booted up. Success!! This drive refused to work on 5 different Macs on its own but now sits happily on the SATA bus for some reason.
I do not know if jumpering the first drive causes the second to work better but it seems to be the case for me.
So then we have it up and running reliably. Why not set it up the way I want it?
I had bought an ATTO UL5D PCIe SCSI card a few months ago. Stuck it in, connected up my Jaz drive and booted up. Inserted a Jaz disk, and low and behold! It mounted!!
I connected my USB Zip 100 and Fujitsu 1.3GB Magneto optical drive and all 3 mounted on my desktop of OS X 10.4.11. Bliss!!
I’m in vintage storage heaven! The ultimate bridge machine for me.
Yes, I know… SCSI2SD, RaSCSI, and BlueSCSI are all great. In fact I have some of each. But nothing feels the same as hearing a Jaz spin up, and the ASMR sounds of an LC475 booting off a Jaz disk.
What’s next? Who knows. For now, the journey is beginning with a new platform for transfers. Let me know if you like this content and I’ll be sure to update you on more of my vintage trials and tribulations.
Tonight, I’m gonna have myself
A real good time, I feel alive!
And the world, I’ll turn it inside out, yeah!
I’m floating around, in ecstasy.
So… don’t stop me now, ‘cause I’m having a good time, having a good time!
I started with my Power Macintosh Digital Audio Dual CPU 533mhz, with its 768MB of RAM and built-in CD burner, running dual boot Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11.
Getting files and operating system software from places like Macintosh Garden onto an older Mac, like the IIfx for example, can be challenging.
So I remembered my old school days and the ease of use of burning CDs. Well, easy there. Not so fast. Burning a CD of downloaded files from Mac OS X Tiger and trying to run them on System 7.0.1 on a IIfx can be a bit of a trial and error. Especially since those older CDROM drives on an old Mac don’t like CDRW media and don’t like ones burned at above 8x usually.
That was a lesson in patience, and cost. I had bought an Apple CD 600, a pack of blank CDR and burned a bunch of toasters.
Then I had a thought: what if I could write to an old media using a modern drive that could be read on a drive from the 90s? That’s where the Zip came into play.
I picked up a SCSI zip 100 drive, some brand new disks, and a USB zip 100. Altogether less cost than the Apple CD 600 and a pack of blank disks, to be honest.
That worked great. Downloading files from the internet using TenFourFox on that G4 really did the trick.
Except for one thing: size and speed. My Zip was limited to 100MB. Which is fine if you’re using it as a system boot volume and a few apps. But you can’t run MYST off of it.
Enter the Jaz drive. 1GB removable hard disk cartridges, faster than most stock hard drives found in Macintosh computers of the 90s, and readily available. The cost of a single Jaz drive was about $45. A pack of brand new disks set me back about $15 USD for 3. Not exactly breaking the bank.
A SCSI card for my G4 was only $20. So add another Jaz drive for about $45 again, and you’re just over $100 USD.
In January 2021 I rediscovered magneto optical and fell in love. I picked up a few different kinds of drives and disks, and even got an IDE Fujitsu 1.3 GB MO for the internal drive bay, using an Apple Zip bezel (the measurements are identical between zip and mo). So now my G4 had Zip 100, Magneto Optical 1300, and Jaz 1GB.
My G4 had a Firmtek SATA card in it, and I was booting from an Intel data center rated SSD until just a few weeks ago. Suddenly I was getting drive corruption for no real reason. Replacing the drive didn’t help either.
Time for the upgrade: I had bought a Dual Core 2.3 GHz Power Mac G5 (with PCI Express) just for this purpose a year ago, and it was time to get it setup and going. This is the fastest Mac that can run 68k software without being liquid cooled (it’s air cooled).
For some reason I had issues getting the G5 to recognize any drives. I would boot the 10.4.6 installer and it would see a drive. I’d install OS X on it, reboot, and nothing. Rinse repeat for 3 solid days I cried vintage tears of pain like I was dealing with SCSI termination issues.
I tried many different drives including ones from other G5’s that were working. I don’t know what was going on or what happened but nothing was working. Even brand new drives I had on my shelf. Infuriating.
I took a break for a day, and then revisited it. I stuck in a WD 1TB SATA drive that came working from one of my Mac Pros. The installer saw it, formatted it, and …. Refused to boot from it. So I pulled it out and decided to try something: I put a jumper on the pins to set its speed to SATA 1/2. This reduced its connection speed from 3/6Gbps to 1.5/3Gbps. The actual result I’m unsure of because the Mac only reports 1.5Gbps.
I fired it up, and it instantly went into the OS X Tiger 10.4.6 I had installed on it. PROGRESS!!
So here’s where I tried something risky: I took my 2TB drive out of my G4, put it into the lower bay, without applying the jumper, and booted up. Success!! This drive refused to work on 5 different Macs on its own but now sits happily on the SATA bus for some reason.
I do not know if jumpering the first drive causes the second to work better but it seems to be the case for me.
So then we have it up and running reliably. Why not set it up the way I want it?
I had bought an ATTO UL5D PCIe SCSI card a few months ago. Stuck it in, connected up my Jaz drive and booted up. Inserted a Jaz disk, and low and behold! It mounted!!
I connected my USB Zip 100 and Fujitsu 1.3GB Magneto optical drive and all 3 mounted on my desktop of OS X 10.4.11. Bliss!!
I’m in vintage storage heaven! The ultimate bridge machine for me.
Yes, I know… SCSI2SD, RaSCSI, and BlueSCSI are all great. In fact I have some of each. But nothing feels the same as hearing a Jaz spin up, and the ASMR sounds of an LC475 booting off a Jaz disk.
What’s next? Who knows. For now, the journey is beginning with a new platform for transfers. Let me know if you like this content and I’ll be sure to update you on more of my vintage trials and tribulations.
Tonight, I’m gonna have myself
A real good time, I feel alive!
And the world, I’ll turn it inside out, yeah!
I’m floating around, in ecstasy.
So… don’t stop me now, ‘cause I’m having a good time, having a good time!
Last edited:
