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I have a knack for buying into removable storage that looks like it will be great but eventually ends up in the market dustbin- syquest drives, LS-120 floppy, Iomega Jaz, etc. I’ve had them all. I was digging in this collection of also-ran storage and found a Castlewood Orb drive and the Castlewood branded usb-scsi adapter. I’ve been interested in getting to one of the disks that has my 1999-2000 mboxes and other odds and ends. These are also backed up on DAT- another storage medium that should have failed- but my DAT drive is an internal, full-height model and I don’t have a PC lying around with a bay. What can I say, I sure can pick ‘em.

The usb-scsi adapter is a Shuttle Technologies eUSCSI chipset and recognized under OSX Leopard. All it took to get working was an active terminator on the drive and setting the SCSI Id to 0 (zero). That SCSI Id means no other device is going to work daisy-chained, but given the roughly 500Kb/s transfer speed I saw this is just good enough to pull my old files off and move them to another medium.

Here’s a dump from the Apple System Profiler:

eUSCSI Bridge Ver 1.11:

  Capacity: 2.05 GB
  Removable Media:  Yes
  Detachable Drive: Yes
  BSD Name: disk2
  Version:  1.00
  Bus Power (mA):   100
  Speed:    Up to 12 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: Shuttle Technology Inc.
  Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
  Partition Map Type:   MBR (Master Boot Record)
  Product ID:   0x0002
  Serial Number:    07
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Not Supported
  Vendor ID:    0x04e6
  Volumes:
MISC:
  Capacity: 1.99 GB
  Available:    1.2 GB
  Writable: Yes
  File System:  MS-DOS FAT16
  BSD Name: disk2s5
  Mount Point:  /Volumes/MISC

It even shows up properly in the Disk Utility and can be repartitioned.

The macports version of emacs 22.1_1 (no x11, no carbon) is broken. I use it. Fortunately, Yamamoto Mitsuharu’s patch http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bugs/16867 allows it to build and install on Leopard x86. The bug tracker has Ticket #13942 for 1.6 and Ticket #13471 for 1.5.2 that have not been acknowledged by the maintainer.

Seems to work so I’ve slapped together a patch file and a portfile to use it until the fixes get incorporated:

• editors/emacs/files/patch-src-unexmacosx.c
• editors/emacs/Portfile

Just works! I gambled and bought an open box DuelAdapter PCMCIA-ExpressCard bridge from Sewell Direct. No drivers to load on OSX Leopard, but make sure the switch on the underside of the card is in position ‘A’ (Mac mode) like it says in the manual. That’s it. The VzAccess Manager detects the card as normal. I tried a few other Type-II cards I had lying around and they behaved as expected, which is to say, they registered but not all of them did anything, that being a matter of having an appropriate driver.

The NationalAccess service is no slower, or faster, than it was with a PCMCIA slot equipped Mac running Tiger. At home I’ve seen a peak of 310KB/s down, 105KB/s up. On the train I usually see 30-50% lower (sometimes much lower) which is still fine for ssh and casual web-browsing.

My only gripe is that the DuelAdapter is big. Not including the size of the expresscard itself, the cable is 9″ long and the PCMCIA carrier is nearly 6″ long and 3″ wide so it doesn’t fit on a standard tray table with the laptop. I’m thinking I might solve this with a piece of medium-duty velcro on the lid of the laptop which would also orient the card in a good position.

Ion3 is a minimal, tiling, tabbing, keyboard-oriented window manager and extensible using Lua. It was removed from macports because its author changed the license to a variant of the LGPL with additional clauses that boil down to: only the core project may use variations on the name ‘Ion’, that anything using the name must keep 28 days current and that anything else is a derived work and must be renamed and not mention the original or the original name. That the author is volatile and abusive might have a lot to do with it being dropped too.

On the other hand, it’s a great keyboard-driven window manager. If you’re still reading along, as of release candidate 20080103 it can still be built and installed under macports without much trouble. Try the following quick hack:

cd /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/x11/ion3
sudo mv Portfile old.Portfile
sudo wget http://db.macports.org/file_ref/emit/34709 -O Portfile

edit the file and replace the version and checksum lines with:

version           3rc-20080103
checksums         sha1 f2ce01631b67a4d317b608d2173b368bf716a2ce

then build as normal, for example:

sudo port install ion3

Note that these changes will be wiped out if you sync up with the repository so you may want to follow the instructions at the Macports Guide: Local repositories and create a local branch.

If you’re reading and ever wonder why I haven’t called, I’m working on that this year. Not exactly a resolution but something I need be thoughtful of.

I’m terrible at keeping in touch with distant friends to the point that if I even still have a working phone number, I feel guilty calling because it’s been so long. I’m better with email but as Maria quipped those are like “Harvey”, my imaginary friends, conversations no one can hear with people no one has seen. New Year’s being the opportunity to start things fresh, I started by emailing my friend Bill. We probably last spoke two years ago, emailed once or twice, hadn’t seen each other in at least ten years, but I got his new number and called. It was good to hear him, less awkward than I thought it would be, maybe because he’s doing well and sounds so happy. Given how busy we both are we probably won’t meet except by chance, but Bill has a gallery of his artwork on-line and with the call I feel a bit like I’ve caught up.

Which is encouraging. So don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard from me in a while and then get a call out of the blue (or an email, if I don’t have a number). I’m working on that this year.