I'd post my setup, but it's currently filled with random Power Macintosh 8500 parts, as well as parts for my 512ke and and other random stuff.
I just finished a several month long project involving my 512ke at long last. I was finally able to build my own external hard drive for my 512ke. I took a LaCie external CDRW ODD and cracked it open, removing the ODD which now resides in my 8500. I didn't really know how to get it working when I first started several months back. Not making much progress other than trying to plug it in and hope something showed up, I shelved the project until this weekend. I was trying to setup an AppleTalk file sharing network with my 512ke and 8500. My 8500 wasn't working, so I took it apart and swapped out some RAM and such and it came back to life. I then realized that I couldn't network to my 512ke because my system disk didn't have file sharing. I then set out to make a new image, which proved difficult to do with 800k floppy disks. So I decided to take the "HD 1080" project out of the closet and start working on it again. After I finally got a 6.0.8 image that I could boot, I discovered something called "HD SC Setup" on one of the disks I downloaded. With my limited knowledge of really old Mac accessories, I had no clue such thing existed. So upon opening it, I discovered that it would work on SCSI drives, which is exactly what I needed! I kept trying to get it to talk to the HD 1080 through the 8500, but it kept failing.
@havokalien suggested that I install 7.5.5 on my 8500, so I did. That allowed me to work on the Floppies for the 512ke without OS 9 rendering them unbootable. I couldn't get it to talk still, and I almost gave up. I was searching online and I came across this random blog and the guy who wrote it literally laid out exactly what I needed to do to get it working. I found that I needed a patched version of HD SC Setup 7.3.5, so I got that and low and behold, I can format the drive. Woohoo... almost. Upon sticking the drive in my 512ke, nothing happened. I then tried running the same HD SC utility on the 512ke, still no reaction.
@bunnspecial though it was the wacky SCSI termination that the Plus ROM needs, and though I needed a external terminator because the one on the HDD wasn't sufficient enough.
@MacTech68 then offered up the suggestion that maybe I had the SCSI cable inside the 512ke installed wrong. So today after school, I cracked it open, and sure enough the cable was in backwards... immediately after fixing it and booting, the HDD made some reading noises upon switching on the 512ke. So close to success... The disk didn't show up on the desktop, which had me slightly concerned. So I fired up HD SC setup and it luckily shows up. So I redo the partition, install 6.0.8 and finally, it works... just about. Upon rebooting, it doesn't boot off the drive. The drive just keeps making 2 reading noises in a row, then a break, then continues reading twice and so forth. So I boot back up the System Tools disk, and I check again. Turns out I need to click on update in the SC HD app to get it to mount, then I need to open an app on the HD to get it to switch over to it. A slight nuisance, but well worth it. First app I tried was Mac paint, which loaded in a matter of 5 seconds, unlike the near 20 on a floppy. I'm so relieved it actually is working after all this time of trial and error. Next step is to figure out how to have it autoboot to it, if possible...
Sorry for rambling, just telling a story of a successful proof of concept
