Performa 550 Data xfer

[Mercutio]

I've been asked to do an on-site job, to transfer data from a Macintosh Performa 550 to a modern P4.

For the record, the Performa 550 has a 68030/33 in it (if you think 386SX/33, you aren't far off), a 160MB SCSI hard disk (with a Mac file system, of course), no ethernet, no PCI and no USB.
The machine is an all-in-one, so taking it apart isn't terribly appealing to begin with.

I'm being asked to move several Filemaker Pro files, and they're over 20MB apiece.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Will Rickards]

Parallel port to port?

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure it has one. Older Macs used ADB for a lot of things like that.

 

[Buck]

This is a tough one Merc. No modern connectors (USB, FireWire, Ethernet, Parallel), ADB, 1.44 FDD, and a 2x CD-ROM drive. It would almost seem that putting the SCSI drive into a newer Macintosh system would be best.

 

[Mercutio]

The only thing I can think to do is put a 50-pin SCSI controller into a Linux machine and taking that with me to facilitate the data transfer. But this guy wants the work done in his home, and taking along an extra desktop isn't really high on the list of things I want to do to earn some money.

 

[timwhit]

Do you have an old external SCSI burner you could use?

I had the external casing for a 50-pin SCSI burner until a couple months ago, but I pitched it assuming there was no possible use for it.

 

[Mercutio]

Somehow, I don't think I can find CD Burning software that will work with OS 6 or whatever it has...

 

[Buck]

The only thing I can think to do is put a 50-pin SCSI controller into a Linux machine and taking that with me to facilitate the data transfer. But this guy wants the work done in his home, and taking along an extra desktop isn't really high on the list of things I want to do to earn some money.

Quote two flat fees for this process, one would be for the in-home service and considerably more expensive.

 

[Will Rickards]

Not that you want to do this, but can you use floppies to transfer the data? Or do mac floppies not use FAT? Their is probably a windows program to read mac formatted floppies though.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd have to split the files I want to transfer into 1.4MB chunks. I'd have to do that on floppy disks because the hard disk of that machine is almost full. I have to make the assumption that the floppy drive still works.

Mac floppies do not use FAT. Newer versions of MacOS can read and write to PC floppies but I'm not sure about a version that old.

 

[ddrueding]

I'd definatly say stripping the HD out is a good first step. After that, I have no idea.

 

[CougTek]

Tell him that for the amount of time it will take you to do the transfer, you'd have to charge below the minimum wage to do it at a reasonable price. I wouldn't bother. He better ask some student to do it. They'll be more willing than you are to waste their time doing this for peanuts.

 

[P5-133XL]

Adaptec used to make notebook SCSI adapters. Then, of course, you still need an OS that can mount the drive and read it -- Linux on the notebook? Then you can transfer the data from the notebook to the PC.

With that in mind, what about a SCSI adapter placed in the P4 machine. Set up a second OS (Linux) and then transfer the data directly.

Regardless, you will need to remove the HD. You really don't want to be dealing with floppies...

 

[sechs]

I'd suggest:
1. Charging more.
2. Telling the customer that this *isn't* an on-site job.

Take the machine, pop the drive, retreive the data, and give them a CD with a copy of all of their data on it.

 

[Sol]

Looks like the linux NTFS driver is a lot more stable for writes these days, a live linux distro on the P4 and a SCSI adaptor seems like the best option to me.