[RndTbl] sad Mac

[Dan Martin]

On 18-Sep-08, at 10:29 AM, Peter O'Gorman wrote:

>> Secure erase overwrites the drives multiple times to ensure that  
>> none of
> the  original information is retrievable.

Yes - if I can write to the drives.
>>
>> The ideal solution for me, if such a thing exists, would be to run an
>> emulator in a modern machine (Mac, PC or Linux running on Intel),  
>> that
>> would be able to access the old drives through hardware that connects
>> the old attachments to USB.  Emulators may be available, but I don't
>> know about the hardware.
>
> The drives would be SCSI-1 (5MB/s), there are cables/adaptors that  
> would
> do it, but I do not have one anymore, ebay is probably your best bet  
> to
> find one.

Good suggestion.  One hard drive cable (an Apple drive) appears to  
have a 19-pin connector, the same as Apple's floppy drive connector.   
The second party hard drive has a 25-pin connector (same physical  
connector for RS-232, but different voltages etc.)

> Do you want to copy the data off the drives before the secure
> erase? Do you happen to know if they are formatted MFS, or HFS? I  
> don't
> know if there are MFS drivers for linux, but one exists for Mac OS X
> (readonly, Apple sample code)

I don't know what format, but good to know some drivers are still  
available.  It would be nice, though not critical, to copy the info.   
If the drivers do not allow me to write to the drives (to destroy the  
info) then I might have to physically destroy them.
>
> http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/MFSLives/index.html. Perhaps
> someone on the list can lend you a cable, if not, I have an older
> powermac g3 that has a scsi interface (but I do not have any scsi
> cables) that you could borrow to do the copy and erase.
>
> Peter
> -- 
> Peter O'Gorman
> http://pogma.com

Thanks Peter!




On 18-Sep-08, at 10:11 AM, Raymond J. Henry wrote:
> I believe I have some SCSI cards kicking around with external ports,  
> would
> have to check. What connector do those Mac cables use? The  
> centronics type,
> if I recall rightly. So easy wipe there, plug it into a PC and away  
> you go.

Then if I could get the PC to see the drive at all, could reformat it.

See above re cables.

> As for emulating C64, check here:
> http://www.zzap64.co.uk/c64/c64emulators.html

Thanks - same problem for the 64, ie connecting devices.


Dan Martin
GP Hospital Practitioner
Computer Scientist
ummar143 at shaw.ca
(204) 831-1746
answering machine always on