Thread

Largest hard drive in a 630?

Largest hard drive in a 630? 68k 45 posts Mar 20, 2008 — Apr 16, 2013

#31 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 - 20:11

Could you use a Compact Flash as a (IDE-) HDD on a 630? Did anybody try?
It would be nice to "load it up" with my favorite applications from BasiliskII and just plug it into the 630 to boot a real Mac...

Yes, a CompactFlash to IDE adapter will work fine in a Quadra 630.

Does Basilisk let you use an entire volume under emulation?

#32 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 - 20:45

Could you use a Compact Flash as a (IDE-) HDD on a 630? Did anybody try?

FWIW, I have tried a CF-IDE adapter in my Performa 630CD and none of my CF cards worked (although the adapter and cards worked in other machines and with SCSI-IDE converter + CF-IDE adapter). That doesn't mean it *won't* work, just the cards and/or configuration I used did not work with it.

I tried Kingston 133x 8GB and a SanDisk UltraII 4GB card.

#33 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 - 02:20

FWIW, I have tried a CF-IDE adapter in my Performa 630CD and none of my CF cards worked (although the adapter and cards worked in other machines and with SCSI-IDE converter + CF-IDE adapter). That doesn't mean it *won't* work, just the cards and/or configuration I used did not work with it.I tried Kingston 133x 8GB and a SanDisk UltraII 4GB card.

I think it has to do with the transfer modes which the card supports. On some machines, a card in an adapter will give errors (NetBSD kernel messages) because higher speed modes won't work, and the speed is then lowered in steps until it starts working with one of the PIO modes.

I have three different kinds of adapters, and only one CF card larger than two gigs which works in any of them, so I can't say for certain what will and what won't work, but all of the cards I've tried which are two gigs or smaller (all the way down to an 8 meg card!) work fine for some reason. I have them in two different Amigas (on the motherboard IDE), on a Motorola Starmax, a SCSI-IDE adapter, and a typical x86 motherboard. They're not fast, but they work.

Have you tried any smallish cards?

#34 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 - 03:38

Have you tried any smallish cards?

The only smaller cards I have are old.

256MB Ridata card ~6-7yrs old

10MB and 4MB Kodak cards from ~1999

Some of my experiments with CF cards in machines are documented here: http://synack.net/~bbraun/idecf.html

The Kingston and SanDisk cards work in the same adapter in many other machines (currently have Kingston cards in an SE, IIx, Beige G3, and Pismo). From what I've read, the 630 has a bit of a quirky ATA controller which would explain some pickiness on the cards.

Rob

#35 Thu, 27 May 2010 - 17:44

Anyway, the key change in 7.6 is that it backports large volume support to older 68040 and PowerPC Macs that do not have it in ROM.

#36 Sat, 29 May 2010 - 10:57

Probably the Q/P630 IDE interface lacks support for removable media due to a restricted driver living in the machine's ROM (like in the PB150 and PB1400). To check if the media connected to the IDE host adapter is operational for the Mac, boot the machine from a CD or external drive into Mac OS 8.1. The System will overwrite the IDE driver with a more capable version, and the System is equipped to mount different formatted drives. In case the IDE flash drive shows up on the Finder desktop, you can reformat it to Apple HFS and configure it as a startup volume. If this works, you will be able to _restart_ the machine to boot from the new drive.

Annotations

1. Most likely the Apple drive setup programme will not want to format the unknown drive, so use guidance for a little ResEdit hack to fix this (to be found in this forum) or use some third party formatter.

2. In case it is possible to _reboot_ the Mac from System 8.1 using the internal IDE drive as a startup volume, but the Mac will not cold boot using this drive after a shutdown, you will need a different kind of media (industrial grade CF / UDMA support will identify as "fixed media" type to mount). PB150 and PB1400 do not accept removable media as a startup volume connected to the internal IDE interface, Q/P630 might not do, as well.

3. Do not try to use other formats than HFS for the purpose as a startup volume. You might have several HFS partitions on that drive, but with any HFS+ partitions on it, it will not be usable as a boot volume for this Mac anymore.

4. In case there is no need to boot the machine often (server), you could configure a CD ROM to boot from with a little AppleScript programme in the startup items folder to perform an automatic restart from an internal CF drive. The startup items folder on the internal drive in return will switch back to boot from CD ROM. Even a forced restart will safely trigger this boot sequence, as long as the system is not corrupted.

#37 Sat, 29 May 2010 - 18:53

Annotations...

3. Do not try to use other formats than HFS for the purpose as a startup volume. You might have several HFS partitions on that drive, but with any HFS+ partitions on it, it will not be usable as a boot volume for this Mac anymore.

I've had large drives with the first (boot) volume formatted as HFS and large additional volumes as HFS+. Where did you hear that having an HFS+ volume anywhere on the disk would make it not usable as a boot volume?

#38 Sat, 29 May 2010 - 22:40

Exactly - I've had drives in my 630 with HFS+ partitions before...so long as you're running OS 8.1 its quite alright to have one or more HFS+ partitions on your drive for storage, you simply can't boot from them or use them for Virtual Memory, you have to have a partition formatted as HFS and it can even be on the same drive if you want.

#39 Sun, 30 May 2010 - 10:15

I apologize if I spread misinformation about the usage of HFS+ partitions. My experience was that a Performa 630 with a 20 GB Maxtor IDE drive would not boot with any HFS+ partition on that drive, no matter if the boot partition was HFS. It might depend strongly to the make of disk drive and the formatting tool you chose, probably to the order of partitions. I attempted several times to fix the issue, but anytime I made any of the partitions HFS+ the P630 refused to boot from that same disk at all.

Could you please tell the details about software/hardware configurations which would run properly with mixed HFS/HFS+ partitions on the boot disk of a P630 ?

Moderator, please feel free to wipe out the misleading portion of my contribution to the thread.

#40 Sun, 30 May 2010 - 21:49

Nothing to apologize about. Sometimes it's tricky - I remember years ago going through many formatting tools trying to find something that'd work with IDE drives (all the old ones don't know about IDE) and also would let me create partitions for NetBSD. I remember I had to do something like connect it to a PowerPC Mac's IDE bus, partition it there, then bring it to the Quadra 630, run a certain version of Disk Utility, and use the "Update Driver" function to get a bootable disk.

I'll try to find the details...

#41 Sat, 3 Jul 2010 - 22:43

The fastest HD you can use on these machines is a PIO 3 standard, which is early ATA-2 drives. On the drive itself it should not list a speed higher than 11.1 mbps. or a cycle time of less than 180 NS. This should be located on the sticker on the drive.

The fact is that all ATA hard drives are backward compatible and can run all the way down to the lowest PIO mode if necessary.

#42 Fri, 7 Jan 2011 - 14:34

Yep LC630

Partitioned 3 ways:

80GB HD pilfered from an deceased imac G4 800mhz

1:Standard:Running Mac OS 8.1 circa 2GB

2:Extended 37.2GB

3:Extended 37.2GB

It is also running higher RAM than Apple Spec @ 132MB

+it has one of these fitted:

http://www.forcedperfect.net/hardware/cards/applempegmediasystem/

Full FPU 040

Video-In Card

TV tuner Card

Its one of the most expandable and diverse 68k Macs I've come across.

#43 Fri, 7 Jan 2011 - 19:41

Dear classic, thank you for the hint to use a disk drive preused inside a more recent machine.

Just for clarification:

Which machine did you use to initialise the drive and set up partions (like your iMac G4)?

What a drive setup software and software version did you use?

Did you perform any kind of harddisk magic, like using a specific partition of a restricted size as a 68k boot partition (like using only the first partition with a size of max 2 GB)?

Btw: nice maxed out 630

#44 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 - 16:03

I booted the LC630 via an external scsi drive with Mac OS 8.1 installed.

I used Drive Setup 1.4 and yes I did have the first boot partition initialised standard and less than 2GB

btw with the scsi drive performance felt way snappier and is quite spacious at 36GB, but being an external drive, its a bit clunky.

Still, 80GB is a big improvement on the 350MB drive that preceded it! :approve:

#45 Tue, 16 Apr 2013 - 16:26

Necroing the hell out of this thread, but I had a similar situation here.

I apologize if I spread misinformation about the usage of HFS+ partitions. My experience was that a Performa 630 with a 20 GB Maxtor IDE drive would not boot with any HFS+ partition on that drive, no matter if the boot partition was HFS. It might depend strongly to the make of disk drive and the formatting tool you chose, probably to the order of partitions. I attempted several times to fix the issue, but anytime I made any of the partitions HFS+ the P630 refused to boot from that same disk at all.

No matter what combination of partitions and filesystem I used with a few different drives and different versions of the disk tools, I could not boot my 631CD if there were *any* HFS+ partitions on the disk. I really don't know how to find what makes my machine different where other people can get around this.