Is it possible? Has anyone tried replacing the floppy drive with a SCSI zip drive in a Portable Mac (SE/30, Classic II, etc.)? Would there be addressing issues with the SCSI bus? I've got a couple of Classic II's I've dreamt of trying this on. I expect that the zip drive would probably be too long to fit completely in the shell and frame, but if it stuck out the front of the machine an inch or so, that would be fine. This would resurrect these machines into simple word processors for the kitchen table, keeping them portable without the need for an external zip drive setup, and I don't want to deal with the old floppy disks anymore? This idea might be more work than it's worth, though. I'm just curious if anyone has tried this? Thanks
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You'd at least need the proper cables to split the SCSI chain and power. Replace the SCSI ribbon cable with one that has 3 or more connectors (one for the logic board, one for the HD, and one for the ZIP).
You might need to add a "Y" adapter on the HD's power plug so you can split it to the ZIP (IDK if there are any extra plugs inside the case -- and the floppy doesn't use the same power connector).
Let us know what you learn -- I might be interested in doing something like this myself!
The floppy gets power over the floppy ribbon cable anyways. As for the Zip, there are internal SCSI Zip drives. I've got one. Just mod the slot and mount the sucker up with a Y-power cable and a two drive internal SCSI cable. It'd be way better than hacking in a big ol' external SCSI Zip drive.
Funnyman posted this link to the ever-useful Jag's House in another thread, about booting a Plus with a zip drive.
Looks like there's a caveat concerning driver version:
http://www.jagshouse.com/zipMacPlus.html
Hi,
I finally got around to doing this project. It went a lot easier than I expected. There's actually a lot of space in the back of the Classic II, so all I did was bend up the back of the floppy bracket, replaced the floppy drive with the zip drive by inserting the scsi zip drive into the floppy bracket using the standard aligned screw positions, cut out the case slot for the front of the zip to fit into by modifying the floppy slot (the plastic cuts quite easily compared to attempts I have made with bezels on other machines), installed the zip, reinstalled the harddrive, attached the y power adaptor and 3 connector scsi cable, and turned it on, no problem, it worked fine. The zip was recognized and mounted to the desktop.
The floppy bracket is attached to the frame by four screws. When you bend up the back of the floppy bracket, you lose two of those four screw connections--no real problem--but you also lose the two screw connections that hold the harddrive bracket in place, so in order to keep the harddrive bracket in place, I wired the back of it to the bent up floppy bracket back (red wire in photo, it'd probably be wiser to drill holes and use nylon ties instead).
When I cut out the rectangular slot for the front of the zip, I only cut down from the floppy slot and an eighth of an inch or so on the sides, but I left the nice straight edge of the top of the floppy slot alone. This turned out to be a problem, because even though the zip slid into place nicely and a zip disk inserted easily, that nice straight top actually crammed the top of the zip drive too tight, and when I went to eject the zip disk the disk was stuck in the drive. So I had to remove everything again and cut out about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch above the top of the floppy slot away. That solved the problem. Unfortunately, my cutting skills weren't too keen and the result was not particularly attractive, but it all works fine now.
That's interesting about the Iomega driver. I tried upgrading the OS in the ClassicII from 7.0.1 to 7.1--using zip disks--and the compatibility check determined that the 5.2 version of the driver I was using in 7.0.1 was potentially incompatible, and near the end the upgrade failed. Maybe I'll try again using the 4.2 version of the Iomega driver installed.
Sorry the quality of the photos aren't great. I was trying to keep the size of the jpeg file down to a minimum. Click on original image size.
http://www.applefritter.com/node/11199
BIG WARNING!!! Working on the inside of a portable Mac is very dangerous the same way working on the inside of any CRT monitor is. There is stored energy inside the circuitry that can cause severe harm or even death. Respect the warnings you see clearly posted inside. Be advised!
Well done on the hack, but yeah, it's a little appearance challenged. Would there have been enough room to take it back a further smidge and cut just a slot for the Zip disk itself, rather than the whole drive?
Yep, there was plenty of room to move it back. I considered that, and the best way to do that would probably be to drill new holes for the screws that hold the floppy bracket to the frame since it would be difficult to rework the holes that hold the drive to the bracket. There's two tabs in the front bottom of the bracket that slip into slots on the frame that also hold the bracket in place, so those would have to be reworked somehow. It all looked like too much work, so I went to what looked like the easier route. Another problem with that idea is that zip disk don't usually stick out as much as floppies when they're ejected, so you might have to mod the slot unattractively anyway just so you can get your fingers in there around the ejected zip disk. But it should look pretty good if you are a more accurate cutter and follow the measurements I provided. Like I say, the plastic was actually pretty easy to cut. It would have gone better if I had used a coping saw that can go deeper. I switched over to the hack saw just because my coping saw couldn't reach over to the far inside. The wife was starting to complain about my spending too much time on an old Mac again--which I probably was--so I did a rush job. Some people just don't understand the finer things in life.