This one has been a long time coming. I’ve had an external SCSI drive on my want list for years. I think I’ve wanted a HD20 as far back as my Mac Plus and SE purchases in 1998. I just haven’t been able get my hands on one. It’s not from the lack of trying. I’ve bid on a few SCs. I just keep missing them. A lot of the Buy It Now prices are ridiculous. They’re usually over $100 bucks.

This one is missing the hard drive, so I got it on-the-cheap. $15 bucks to be exact. That’s cheaper than most people charge for the shipping. I just happen to have a spare 80 MB SCSI drive, (the one that I pulled from the Color Classic in favor of a 1.2 GB drive) so it’s not a problem.

It has some discoloration, not to mention it’s filthy. You can tell there were a few labels stuck on the front at one point.



There’s a few dings here and there, but at this point I’m just happy to finally have one in my collection. It’s going to look awesome holding up my SE!







At least it has all 4 feet. That’s always a plus!



There’s a little corrosion under the lid, but nothing bad.



It definitely needs to be taken apart and washed. It’s filthy inside.



I dug out that old 80 MB SCSI drive, a SCSI cable, and a terminator. I already see a problem. This is obviously not the same drive Apple used in the 80SC.



The front of the 80SC has a piece of plastic along the trim that is obviously designed to reflect drive activity from an LED on the inside. The 80SC as well as my 80 MB drive have no such LED. I’d have to connect an LED to the 2 pin plug on the drive.



I think the drive inside my SE is the same style that came in the 80SC. It has a LED attached to the mounting bracket. Maybe I can swap them. Although, my SE’s drive is 40 MB and not 80 MB. At least I’ll be ale to use both if I swap them.



Another problem I see is that the white cable that connects to the SCSI ID switch on the back has nowhere to go on this drive.



If I put this 80 MB drive in here without connecting the cable, it’ll probably just take the default assignment of 0, which is the same as the 40 MB drive inside my SE.



I’ll try it out and see what happens. I hooked the 80SC up to my Mac SE, chaining it to my SCSI Zip drive, and powered everything up. Wouldn’t you know it, the SE booted right off the 80SC and into OS 7.5. Remember, I pulled the drive from my Color Classic, so it had a fully working install on it.



It works, but the drive must have taken the assignment of 0 just as I suspected because my internal 40 MB drive is not detected. I’ll have some further tweaking to do if I’m going to get everything to place nice.

There’s a jumper block on the back of the drive for setting the SCSI ID. I found the documentation online and set it to drive 6, but Lido just complains that it can’t read the drive capacity and then gives me all kinds of errors. Needless to say, the drive doesn’t mount. This drive only seems to work when set to 0.



I opened up the SE in an attempt to set the internal drive to something other than 0.



It’s obvious that the yellow jumper by the SCSI connector is responsible for settings the ID. However, I figured I’d just leave it alone and check out the 700 M drive that’s in my Classic. As it turns out, it has the correct SCSI connector that the 80SC needs. I popped it in the 80SC, set the SCSI to 6, and powered everything up.



So far so good.



Both drives have a unique SCSI ID and are both detected.



Now that it works, all I have to do is clean it up. For now I’ll just clean it in the sink and then retr0brite it when the weather gets nice.

Taking it apart is a snap. The metal tray inside the lid comes out easily.



There’s a plastic tab that secures the power supply. Pop it with a screwdriver and the power supply will lift right out.



Don’t pull it out all the way, it’s still connected to everything else.



Underneath the SCSI connectors there’s another tab that you have to pop.



Once that’s free, the whole assembly will lift out...



...along with the power supply.



I did the best I could to clean all that black gunk out from behind the fan and underneath the metal plate. It was pretty dirty. Some of it won’t come off.



After a retr0brite session I think it’ll look as good as new. For now, until it gets a little sunnier outside, it’ll sit underneath my SE.