I bought a 1400c off ebay and discovered that a) it has a working drive and b) it has the dissertation of a dead man on it. I'd like to get the data off it and get it to his living relatives.

So I have two goals:

* Extricate data off the current hd
* Put a new hdd in for a fresh installation

To get a fresh install, I have a CF-IDE adapter and a bluescsi db25 + db25-hdi30 cable. Problem: Plugging in the cable and rescanning the bus causes my powerbook to just... Stop. If I remove the cable, it suddenly regains consciousness and continues merrily along.

The cable was from IEC: https://iec.net/product/scsi-cable-apple-power-book-hdi30-male-to-db25-female-2-foot/

Is this just a known thing that some of these cables are junk and don't work right? Or are they expecting scsi termination that the bluescsi just can't do?

I guess you didn't plug that cable in while the system was running? You are not supposed to do that ;)

Yeah, don't do that. Have it all plugged in before you power on. Also make sure you have the bus correctly terminated.

Yeah I think something's up with my HDI-30 cable; It won't even boot when I plug in the cable (let alone any peripheral) attached. Peeking inside the connector, it looks like a back alley hackjob with loose wires, clearly a 50 pin centronics to db25 conversion done badly.

I've gotten one of the angled adapters on the way so I'll find out then.

Please don't hot plug SCSI devices - it's not designed for that and you could do serious damage.

BlueSCSI won't run off the back of a PowerBook as it doesn't provide the termination power needed. You might be able to plug in a USB cable to provide power that way?