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New MDD.

1042686

1042686

Cancelled
Original poster
Sep 3, 2016
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So I lucked out again and scored a free single CPU 1.25Ghz MDD, 2GB DDR, 80Gb HDD, ATI Radeon9000. Interestingly, it came with a scsi card which I am clueless about, so this should be a fun introduction into that sort of thing. Talked to Ben and got the long n' the short of it, so I think I will try and hunt down a scsi drive for it. I have never used one and have heard & read about how they are more responsive drives than ide so that should be fun. It is a beautiful case design. Dunno if I like it more than the QS design. I thought I would notice more "oomph" with the 2GB of DDR vs the 1.5GB of PC133 but it seems on par with the QS if not a tad slower in some ways but that could be a number of things. This is a 167Mhz bus MDD, so I am hoping to upgrade to a dual CPU daughter card at some point and do a build similar to the British gent on youtube with the really blonde hair. Anyhow, it is a cool box for sure & a keeper. :)
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Windtunnel! Nice!

Congratulations. Keeping my eye out for an MDD myself.

Internally, the layout and thermal design is superior to the Quicksilver.

That said, the Quicksilver is STILL my favorite looking Mac.
 
Thanks! Yeah I noticed they flip flopped the PCI and CPU/heatsink placement in the MDD case vs. the QS - makes sense. The HDD placement & added space is also nice however I am more a fan of the QS sled design vs boxy HDD cages. No biggie though, just a personal pref.

In regards to Dual processor daughter cards - from my understanding, because this FW400/single 1.25Ghz MDD has a 167Mhz bus, it should be able to be upgraded to the FW800/MDD 1.25Ghz DP Dcard, correct? Has anyone out in PPCland done this? Thanks for the help :)
 
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RhianB said:
Thanks! Yeah I noticed they flip flopped the PCI and CPU/heatsink placement in the MDD case vs. the QS - makes sense. The HDD placement & added space is also nice however I am more a fan of the QS sled design vs boxy HDD cages. No biggie though, just a personal pref.

In regards to Dual processor daughter cards - from my understanding, because this FW400/single 1.25Ghz MDD has a 167Mhz bus, it should be able to be upgraded to the FW800/MDD 1.25Ghz DP Dcard, correct? Has anyone out in PPCland done this? Thanks for the help :)
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Yeah, you should be able to do that without any problem. Thanks to the fact you have the last single MDD model, otherwise you would have to desolder a resistor on the back of the motherboard to get a 167mhz bus.

I have done this with my SP 1Ghz FW800 in order to put an 1.33ghz Xserve daughtercard which I overclocked to 1.5ghz.
 
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Only a 25-pin connector on the SCSI card, so it's likely low-speed card intended for scanners and ZIP drives etc. Card likely doesn't have HDD support. Adaptec 2906 possibly...

Can you get a better photo of the SCSI card?
 
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MagicBoy said:
Only a 25-pin connector on the SCSI card, so it's likely low-speed card intended for scanners and ZIP drives etc. Card likely doesn't have HDD support. Adaptec 2906 possibly... Can you get a better photo of the SCSI card?
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You're right. It is an Adaptec 2906. This was originally in a photography gallery so a port for a scanner or printer makes complete sense but why then does it have an internal port for a cable if it was to be used only for external peripherals? Was it for linking multiple Scsi PCI cards together or something like that? Maybe an internal zip drive?


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XaPHER said:
Yeah, you should be able to do that without any problem. Thanks to the fact you have the last single MDD model, otherwise you would have to desolder a resistor on the back of the motherboard to get a 167mhz bus. I have done this with my SP 1Ghz FW800 in order to put an 1.33ghz Xserve daughtercard which I overclocked to 1.5ghz.
Click to expand...

Thanks for verifying, Xapher. I have another question (full of them this morning). What is this card for? Is it Bluetooth? It is missing on my specific MDD but I saw the mounts, port & cable for it and was curious. Thanks a bunch.

mysteryoso card.jpg
 
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RhianB said:
What is this card for? Is it Bluetooth? It is missing on my specific MDD but I saw the mounts, port & cable for it and was curious. Thanks a bunch.
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That would be a modem card, today they aren't needed cause of broadband connections, but if you used dial-up, that's how you would connect to the internet
 
MacCubed said:
That would be a modem card, today they aren't needed cause of broadband connections, but if you used dial-up, that's how you would connect to the internet
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Ahh, makes sense why it's gone. I contemplated a 56k modem considering the age of the MDD but was not sure. Thanks for clarifying.
 
RhianB said:
You're right. It is an Adaptec 2906. This was originally in a photography gallery so a port for a scanner or printer makes complete sense but why then does it have an internal port for a cable if it was to be used only for external peripherals? Was it for linking multiple Scsi PCI cards together or something like that? Maybe an internal zip drive?
Click to expand...

A 50-pin internal connector was typically used for optical, ZIP, Jaz, Syquest or tape drives. All of which are fine on a 10MB/sec bus. Factory option for SCSI HDDs at that time would been Ultra SCSI at 80 or 160MB/sec and they use a 68-pin connector..

To digress slightly, early IDE CD-RW drives could be a bit flaky as they hadn't come up with buffer under-run technology yet. If the PC got caught up with another application then the burn would likely fail as soon as the buffer memory on the drive ran out after a couple of seconds. With SCSI the intelligence is on the controller and they'd often continue burning successfully where an IDE drive would produce a part burned coaster. Quite important when they were £1+ a blank disc.
 
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MagicBoy said:
To digress slightly, early IDE CD-RW drives could be a bit flaky as they hadn't come up with buffer under-run technology yet. If the PC got caught up with another application then the burn would likely fail as soon as the buffer memory on the drive ran out after a couple of seconds. With SCSI the intelligence is on the controller and they'd often continue burning successfully where an IDE drive would produce a part burned coaster. Quite important when they were £1+ a blank disc.
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I can remember in my first job, the guy who sat next to me was responsible for burning a backup of the production server. He would set up Toast for the burn, quit every running app, start the burn and then go to lunch.

Everyone was told not to touch his Mac. ANYTHING could cause burn failure!

:)
 
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Very true Erik. The OS' of the time didn't help much.

I'd reboot the machine and quit anything that wasn't required, then set the burn off and quietly creep out of the room to do something else for 40 minutes before returning in the hope it hadn't spat a coaster out.
 
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MagicBoy said:
Very true Erik. The OS' of the time didn't help much.

I'd reboot the machine and quit anything that wasn't required, then set the burn off and quietly creep out of the room to do something else for half an hour before returning in the hope it hadn't spat a coaster out.
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"There are fields Neo, vast fields…"

Oh, sorry, wrong subject. Coasters. Yeah, I've made more than my fair share of shiny but useless plastic discs!
 
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eyoungren said:
That's cool, LOL!!! :D

Just don't put anything on the Iomega disk you intend to keep! ;)
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The Ditto was a tape drive for archive/backup. Travan tapes I think, 400MB each. The 800 refers to "compressed" data as they assumed 2:1.

Predates the MDD by a good few years. We sold them at my then work around 1997/1998.
 
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MagicBoy said:
The Ditto was a tape drive for archive/backup. Travan tapes I think, 400MB each. The 800 refers to "compressed" data as they assumed 2:1.

Predates the MDD by a good few years. We sold them at my then work around 1997/1998.
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Ahhh!

I had a Jazz drive at one point. My mom was using it. Sent it off to a member here. Never used it myself.

The last go around I had with Iomega was a 250mb USB drive. It had the bad habit of wiping out the content of my disks whenever I used it. POC!

Around that time flash drives were becoming the big thing so I stopped using the damn thing.
 
MagicBoy said:
I liked the Jaz, it was as fast as most hard drives when it launched. Expensive though. I've still got a couple of Zip drives somewhere thinking about it...
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I have an external zip100 connected to my QS. I have it velcroed to the side of my desk next to a 1.44mb external floppy drive. I found a cool icon for it too so it doesn't use the generic white osx one. I've had it ever since late 97-8ish when the basic webdesign electives I was taking at college req'd it - the schools classrooms & labs all used them. That weird time between 1.44mb floppies and CDRW dominance I guess.
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For the record, I prefer the QS bong to the MDD. :D
 
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RhianB said:
For the record, I prefer the QS bong to the MDD. :D
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I'm always a little surprised that the bong makes such a loud noise and practically shakes the area around it when my MDD boots up. Why is it like that, even with the volume lowered?
 
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Slix said:
I'm always a little surprised that the bong makes such a loud noise and practically shakes the area around it when my MDD boots up. Why is it like that, even with the volume lowered?
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Turn your alert volume down. :)

It's based on the alert volume.
 
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