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| Author | Do SCSI and PATA hard drive adapters exist? (Read 32974 times) | ||||||||||||||
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ShinobiKenobi
256 MB  Posts: 362 System 7 fan 
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on: September 26, 2024, 07:28
All my 50-pin SCSI hard drives in my early-mid '90s Macs are bad, but I have plenty of 39/40 pin PATA drives. So I've been trying to find out if there are any adapters I can use so that I can use PC-compatible hard drives in them. But Newegg doesn't have any, and I'm not paying what they want for old SCSI refurbished hard drives. I've been looking on ebay and amazon and other places for over a month, and haven't been able to find any. Does anyone know if they even exist? I never ask for help until after I feel like I've failed at trying to find something myself after a long time and many attempts. Even if they do exist, are they dependable? Thanks! |
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Last Edit: September 26, 2024, 07:33 by ShinobiKenobi
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #1 on: September 26, 2024, 15:14
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You do not mention the Mac model you are dealing with. For PCI and NuBus(?) Macs there are add in controller cards to provide a PATA interface. Searching for Adaptec and/or Sonnet on eBay might provide some useful and affordable options which I am sure are all used devices. If you have a laptop with a PCMCIA slot, there are adaptors to allow for using an SD card as a hard drive. Of course there is also the BluSCSI adaptor that is very popular around here. The lack of functional reliable SCSI hard drives is something of a road block on older Macs, and it will get worse as time goes on. Solutions are not cheap, but also are totally horrible especially considering without a storage solution the old Macs are pretty useless.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #2 on: September 26, 2024, 16:30
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A PATA->SCSI converter sounds like one of those things that should exist, but probably due to the low demand, would be rarer than hen's teeth. Like. SCSI->FireWire interfaces and that sort of thing. Definitely technically possible, but not easy, since it'd have to translate the command interface both ways, so it'd need a microcontroller. You might find a project using a raspberry pi doing it. Now, technically, compact flash is (can be?) the same thing/protocols/etc as PATA, so in theory something like an older bluescsi kind of interface (one that used CF cards, not SD ones) with the right cable would work. I've got an "IDE card" in my Apple 2 gs, that came with an adapter from laptop IDE (which the board uses) to Compact Flash. So I know they can be the same in some cases. (Probably only older CF cards). ---- I have Sonnet PATA and SATA adapter cards that I used extensively while working with building Classilla, and got very good results under heavy conditions. Both much faster than the native SCSI in my 7600. For the same reason as you, I had tons of large old IDE drives just sitting around and didn't want to stress the large, but ancient, scsi drives I have. I moved the same laptop SATA drive between the 7600 and a G4, which was very convenient...but since I've got more PATA just sitting around idle, the 7600 is using a 250g PATA drive currently, which is more than enough for it. (But not as fast as SATA). I've also been very happy with my bluescsi knockoff/clone (a "zuluscsi")...and am in the process of imaging all my old SCSI drives to preserve their contents for when the day comes they just stop spinning. I also have a CF->PCMCIA that works very well, with an SD->CF too, but haven't tried it in a Mac. So I've been able to use SD cards on very old machines (but not as their main drive). ---- I think either a PATA or SATA card, or a bluescsi kind of adapter would be much more affordable, easier to find, and better performing than something that'd let you use a PATA drive directly on a SCSI bus. Obviously the Sonnet cards would only work on PCI machines...again a nubus PATA card is possible, but would be extremely rare if they even exist. For a laptop that had PCMCIA if you really wanted to use a PATA drive with it, in theory you could rig an adapter if you had a CF->PCMCIA, but it'd need external power...so going with just CF or SD would be good...but you probably couldn't boot off it.
Last Edit: September 26, 2024, 16:35 by lauland
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ShinobiKenobi
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256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan
Reply #3 on: September 26, 2024, 23:29
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Thanks guys. It's for my LC III. I forgot about BlueSCSI.
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