Hi all!
Not sure if this is the right forum to ask, but here goes: a while back I bought a lovely SCSI2SD from
@Rob Blessin Black Hole, complete with a MicroSD card loaded with various partitions filled with useful software. For reasons to dumb/boring to recount here, I'm upgrading my Cube from the SCS2SD over to a BlueSCSI. I've managed to get it working with the NeXTSTEP image from WinWorld, but of course that image is a bare/fresh OS with no additional software or anything.
So here's the question: can anyone give me some tips or guidance on how I can convert the contents of the card I bought from Rob into a set of disk images suitable for a BlueSCSI? Alternately, if anyone has a BlueSCSI-friendly disk image with a bootable install of NeXTSTEP and some handy / fun apps and is willing to share, I'd be grateful!
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
Huxley
If you have a BlueSCSIv2 "desktop" model that supports "Initiator mode", then the easiest method would be to use that to create an image of the SCSI2SD:
https://bluescsi.com/docs/Initiator-ModeYou just need to set the Jumpers on the BlueSCSIv2 so that it runs in Initiator Mode and then connect the SCSI2SD to it like a normal harddisk, and the BlueSCSIv2 will then automatically create an image of the contents of the partitions on the SCSI2SD.
Another option would be to
https://github.com/dburr/scsi2sd_to_hda, but you will need a Linux or macOS system with an SD card reader to be able to use this script.
Quote from: don_apple on January 21, 2025, 11:23:42 PMIf you have a BlueSCSIv2 "desktop" model that supports "Initiator mode", then the easiest method would be to use that to create an image of the SCSI2SD: https://bluescsi.com/docs/Initiator-Mode
You just need to set the Jumpers on the BlueSCSIv2 so that it runs in Initiator Mode and then connect the SCSI2SD to it like a normal harddisk, and the BlueSCSIv2 will then automatically create an image of the contents of the partitions on the SCSI2SD.
Another option would be to https://github.com/dburr/scsi2sd_to_hda, but you will need a Linux or macOS system with an SD card reader to be able to use this script.
Oooh that looks helpful - thanks for the link! The one part I'm unclear about is the fact that the SCSI2SD card has multiple volumes on it - not sure if this tool (or Initiator Mode, for that matter) will be able to parse them into different images...
Sorry, no idea. You just have to give it a try.
If you are familiar with compiling stuff on Linux you could also try
https://github.com/j-hoppe/img2sd which apparently allows to specify SCS2SD volume to read from.
Okay, I'm back with a very happy update: I got it working!
Thank you
@don_apple for pointing me towards that SCSI2SD_to_HDA tool, which is how I (eventually) got it done.
Unfortunately, the only modern Mac I have access to currently is heavily locked down (it's a work computer with some intense MDM software installed), so doing the conversion there was a no-go. Given this, I set up an Ubuntu virtual machine in VirtualBox on my PC, so I'd at least have an unrestricted Linux environment to use for this project.
Because the SCSI2SD's card doesn't have any mountable volumes or partitions (it's literally a bunch of raw data dumped onto the card), I could not get it working with this script in my VM. However, within Windows I did manage to make a raw "dd" type image file of the MicroSD card, which was a big step in the right direction.
Using this tool was an ordeal for a non-Linux person like me, but after much trial-and-error and many confused Google searches, I got it to work and it elegantly and swiftly created separate, correctly-named HDA images from the 'raw data' on the MicroSD card. Amazing!
Here's a Pro Tip for anyone doing this who (like me) isn't a Linux wizard: if you're going to do this from Ubuntu like I did, you can't just invoke the script - you have to literally type the word "bash" before the script name, image name, and XML file - otherwise, you'll get a bunch of "read: illegal operation -d" errors. Also, you might find that your life is easier if you remove any spaces from the filenames of the script, your image, and the XML file. Here's a screenshot (
https://imgur.com/a/UHkx1jP) of the output once I got it working - I hope this helps someone else down the road!
Also: Hey
@Rob Blessin Black Hole: if you don't already have them, I'm happy to share these BlueSCSI-friendly images with you, so you can pass them along to any of your other customers who want them. Let me know!
Nice! I've been contemplating doing the same thing since I also have the SCSI2SD card you do, and will be using BlueSCSI in the future on some NeXT restorations.
Quote from: Scutboy on January 23, 2025, 06:56:03 AMNice! I've been contemplating doing the same thing since I also have the SCSI2SD card you do, and will be using BlueSCSI in the future on some NeXT restorations.
It's funny, the only real downside I've found in these spinning-rust-to-solid-state conversions is that I really miss the sensory experience of the spinning/humming/clicking drives. The original hard drive in my Cube is physically enormous and when it spins up, you FEEL it as much as hear it!
My FloppyEmu was upgraded with a "Floppy Knocker" - a little gadget that sits between the Floppy Emu and the computer. It has an electromechanical relay inside and does a decent job of replicating the click-clack sounds of an old floppy drive. I wonder if anyone involved in the SCSI2SD / BlueSCSI projects have ever considered doing something similar...