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| Author | Largest hard drive on a PB 180? (Read 14831 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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System777
32 MB  Posts: 45  
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on: January 18, 2009, 15:21
Hello, I just bought a Powerbook 180 off of eBay and I'd like to upgrade the RAM and Hard Drive. Does anyone here know how large of a drive I can put in this computer? I believe it uses a SCSI interface but what should I look for beyond that? Thanks! David |
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #1 on: January 18, 2009, 16:12
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The Powerbook 180 uses a 2.5" SCSI drive. From what I recall the largest ones made were about 500MB in size. There were ATA to SCSI adaptors making it possible to use a more common and larger ATA drive. In practical terms the Powerbook 180 running System 7 would probably be a decent productive machine with an 80-100MB drive. All versions of System 7 use a very modest amount of hard drive space. Productivity application of that era were also very trim compared to their newer versions. bill
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manimal347
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4 MB Posts: 4
Reply #2 on: January 20, 2009, 00:56
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Wove's right. These drives are very rare now, and your best bet is to pull 2.5" one out of a broken down SCSI PowerBook. Perhaps a drive from a BlackBird 5xx would work? If you need extra mass storage, I suppose you can run a SDCSI ZIP drive.
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252 
Reply #3 on: January 20, 2009, 01:23
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I cruised around and found SCSI converters for 2.5/3.5" drives. I am not sure if they would do what you want. Here is the link: http://www.addonics.com/products/io/
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #4 on: January 20, 2009, 05:37
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Quote from: "Lichen Software" I cruised around and found SCSI converters for 2.5/3.5" drives. I am not sure if they would do what you want. Here is the link: That is unlikely to be very useful inside of a PowerBook.
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252
Reply #5 on: January 20, 2009, 12:26
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Hi Dan, You are probably right. But it does say both 3.5" and 2.5" drives, so the possibility is there. Also, I do not know the capacity per volume that this powerbook will read. So even if it would work, there could be some pre-partitioning required. The idea is that with the link, if they are serious, they can contact these people and see what if any their options are. Also, in general terms, the ability to put standard drives into older desk top machines that originally came with SCSI is a great benefit. So the link could be useful for those people. Dave
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beachycove
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16 MB Posts: 31
Reply #6 on: January 21, 2009, 00:38
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2.5" scsi drives have long ceased to be manufactured, and your best bet for finding one is to scavenge one from an old machine. If you want to spend lots of money on the new-to-you powerbook 180, however, a Japanese seller on eBay is presently selling custom 2.5" scsi-compact flash converters tailor made for old powerbooks — for something in the order of $100. As for drive size, MacOS 7.1 will format and work with anything up to 2GB; 7.5 anything up to 4GB. Because of the way the file system works, however, 2GB is more efficient, and 2GB is very, very hard to fill up with vintage software: it is, in short, plenty big. However, you won't find a scsi drive that size, as they were never manufactured above 1GB, I believe, and those are very, very rare. Most you find are <350MB. There were also scsi-ide converters sold in the early 90s that sometimes appear in auctions and such, and that were even shipped in late Powerbook 540c models, in which an ide drive was converted for scsi connection. These are hard to find, but they do exist, and might sell for a good deal less than $100 if you can find one. As others have said, your best bet would be a scrap machine. Maybe another 180 for parts?
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #7 on: January 21, 2009, 01:03
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7.6.1 will read any size drives. I've had drives 40 GB in size in 3400cs.
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