This old external hard drive can do WHAT?!

At first glance the MicroNet SANcube looks like a big external FireWire hard drive. But it has an unexpected trick up its sleeve...
Sources:
Apple Lisa photo: commons.wikime...
SANcube product page: web.archive.or...
10/100 Ethernet hub photo: commons.wikime...
"Crowning our new switch leaders," NetworkWorld, May 10, 1999.
FireTape 50 press release: web.archive.or...
Nissan Cube photo: commons.wikime...
"Ampex to Acquire MicroNet," The Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1998.
Ampex building photo: commons.wikime...
"MicroNet Close Doors," www.storagenew...
"Former MicroNet employees rally to save the company," www.macworld.c...
"Fantom Drives acquires MicroNet," www.macworld.c...
FireWire extender photo: www.spectratec...
Fibre channel switch photo: commons.wikime...
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Music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicso...).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (freemusicarchi....

[@dreadpiratekristo]

I hate it when a project ends in "the software is basically gone". Cool video, man.

[@mindaugasstankus5943]

Will happen basically to all heavily encumber tech by patents and royalties. Seconds official support ends (dropped by major proponent/manufactures) it become paper weight pretty fast...

[@nickwallette6201]

I think, in this case, that might be a blessing. The feat this was trying to pull off seems like it probably didn't perform great, and would have to be essentially bug-free to not decimate the integrity of the file system. It IS a shame that it can't just expose the underlying storage at the block level, though. It would make a neat external HDD chassis. (If not a tedious one to maintain.)

[@thegeforce6625]

Reminds me of the Media100 cards that came in a PowerMac G4 that I bought a good while ago. Useless without the software, the software requires a licence to purchase, said license is tied to the machine or OS install, and (I think) even requires a physical license key. Plus a hardware breakout box that I don’t have. So they just sit on the shelf looking pretty.

[@trippinzakk]

Right, I was thinking the same thing.

[@TheStarscouts]

I'm hoping someone who has a working copy of the software sees this video so there can be a part 2

[@CDP-1802]

I fished one of these out of a dumpster circa 2004 and added a bunch of seagate drives to it and it worked with my Mirror Door running OSX panther for years, I don't remember having to do anything to configure it, each drive just showed up as an external firewire device. I knew about the multi mac support but from what I remember that was OS9 only. You might want to try all the firewire ports, I can't remember but one may have been the "prime" port required to use it without the software.

[@colinstu]

Yeah I wondered too if he tried them all

[@alextirrellRI]

I noticed some DIP switches in the center of the FireWire ports. Maybe they disable the software requirement.

[@eirinym]

I do think in situations like this, if the companies responsible for them abandon them, they should turn it over to people who actually care to make it workable. They're not interested in marketing it, servicing it, or dealing with it at all. So why not release the associated software/firmware and allow anyone who wants to use what's basically defunct hardware do so?

[@sykoteddy]

I think it has to do with them being either unable to see that someone could want to do that, or that they are afraid it will gain popularity again and they can't make money of it after they have done what you said.

[@nickwallette6201]

Patents. Not only is there probably technology in there that has been folded into newer projects, but some of it may not even be entirely owned by them. I would really like to see a movement away from closed-source development on both hardware _and_ software, with a body charged with maintaining patent registrations which have no usage restrictions -- just to ensure that nobody else can file a patent and keep the underlying innovation locked down.

[@TechRyze]

@@nickwallette6201 Nowadays it'd likely be cheaper and easier to do things using Linux / Unix and open source software. Less so back then for MacOS software RAID.

[@pauldeddens5349]

I think for any commercial product, all licensing and software/hardware should become open source when official support ends. Could you imagine what that would do for millions of dead printers, smart devices, and other DRM online only garbage? Maybe if their service has some _really_ important and secret shit in there, thats encouragement to keep the services alive.

[@Nordlicht05]

​@@nickwallette6201 I think more and more interesting in cars. I terms of home automation also. Yea but you now get this and this. The whole problem is in throwing things away if these get unusable too soon.

[@Logan5Greye]

I recently learned firewire is still alive and kicking in the Linux community. There are audio interfaces that use firewire to communicate with the OS. That blew me away when I heard that's what some people are still using it for

[@kurtwinter4422]

Thunderbolt traces its lineage to FireWire

[@Logan5Greye]

@@kurtwinter4422 Apple developed firewire with Sony, Panasonic and Texas Instruments. Then Intel and Apple developed Thunderbolt together. Somehow they connect with a USB-C connector??? Intel helped develop Thunderbolt and USB so maybe that's why the Type C connector is becoming ubiquitous?

[@julian.morgan]

Yup - I have an RME Fireface 800 which was a professional quality audio interface from a time when USB 2.0 was the competition - that's around 2008. My FF800 is still the backbone of my home studio, though I use mine with a hackintosh to combine MacOS with having upgradeable hardware. I'll be using MacOS (actually OSX) air-gapped for many years to come and long after Apple has stopped supporting Intel CPUs because for audio you really do not need modern CPU performance (if you know how to bus a plugin!) but you'll always want low latency and bombproof reliability. I keep dipping my toe in the world of Linux Audio thanks to Cockos Reaper, and they're making huge strides, just not quite there yet.

[@denniseldridge2936]

I've still got an M-Audio FW-something unit, and a firewire expansion board to go with it, so it will be going in one of my units at some point. There are drivers for it on the site (use the Windows 7 drivers), and Windows 10 does still support the standard.

[@ericlotze7724]

Any good links to workflows? I got an old (Mini) DV Broadcast camera, and the digital out is *firewire* (analog out works fine, but digital is higher quality supposedly)

[@laughingvampire7555]

This shows you the anti-repeairability of companies that existed even back then. It would've been so easy if they did offer helping material and then publish ads on safety to repair electronics, training for people who want to repair professionally or personally their tech. They could make money of that.

[@kpbendeguz]

I've worked for a small TV station between 2000-2002 and we had one of these. Our workflow was DV based (SD resolution) and the Cube worked perfectly. We were able to transfer videos from a video tape on any of the 4 Macs and edit them on any of the machines with Final Cut Pro. Since 100mbit ethernet was slower than transfering the tape, it was the best solution other than using super expensive 1Gbit ethernet and even more expensive file servers.

[@codix__]

Sadly you can't find the software or one of the old Mac back in there ? Or if you made a personal copy of the computer. It could just help to know on what media type the driver was in.

[@kpbendeguz]

@@codix__ I've quit the job at 2002 (I was a news editor and switched to VFX) and unfortunatelly I know nothing about what happened with the company that run the TV at that time and even less about what they did with the old hardware.

[@mobilephone4045]

Hot tip. Order some speaker foam (intended for the front cover of a speaker) and fix it over the inside of the intakes with male vecro (the hook part) which it sticks to really well. . In the future you just swap out the foam. Also, a car headlight restoration kit will take those plastic scratches out and make it like new. I've been doing this on vintage turntable dust covers for years. Also, I bet this unit spent its life on carpet, hence the fluff. Lastly, I never miss one of your videos. Love your work.

[@sterlinsilver]

McGuire's plastX is MAGIC at cleaning plastic,

[@mobilephone4045]

@@sterlinsilver I use the 3M headlight restoration kit

[@volvo09]

@@sterlinsilver I was going to say Plast-x works great, you get a whole bottle that'll last for years, and you can use it on car headlights... That's what I originally got my bottle for years ago. I've even saved a scratched CD or two with it.

[@Xe4ro]

I like that the big-ass FireWire logo on the back. :D

[@KayoMichiels]

Just give it a couple of days.. and somebody will pop up with a disc image...

[@TUUK2006]

Guaranteed. LGR has dug up way more obscure stuff.

[@NikkiWrightVGM]

Sounds like it'll need a crack to bust the serial registration. We'll need some pirates for this RAID nerdiness :P

[@avamnepohui7260]

Already, one of the viewers offered to send the disc 4 hours after the video was released.

[@hatsumi_rou_]

​@@avamnepohui7260reported for misinformation

[@TalesOfWar]

FireWire was pretty brilliant for networking without the need for switches etc thanks to being peer to peer. It's kind of sad how it didn't have much life beyond the world of Apple, though it's apparently a fairly common interface on military hardware thanks to how robust it is and the incredibly low latency. They use the 3200 spec on the F-35 I believe (yes the F-35 has been in development that long).

[@JimmyDoresHairDye]

Firewire was frequently shipped on Sony products, including the PS2, which is technically one of the biggest selling computers of all time.

[@eDoc2020]

FireWire was on most laptops from the Pentium 4 through the Core 2 Duo era. It just didn't get as much use.

[@Pasi123]

FireWire was really common on camcorders in the 2000s. If you had a digital camcorder (MiniDV or Digital8) and wanted to copy the videos to a computer then most likely you used FireWire. A lot of business and workstation desktops and laptops had FireWire up to the early 2010s, for example HP Z420/Z620/Z820. It was also common on multimedia laptops back when they were a thing. Most even slightly higher end-ish LGA775, LGA1156, LGA1366, AM2+, AM3 motherboards had at least one FireWire port. It wasn't uncommon on LGA1155 or LGA2011 boards either

[@Madrrrrrrrrrrr]

I still use firewire for audio and I wouldn't call it: low latency. Actually the latency is rather high because of the Firewire protocol

[@TechRyze]

It was commonly used in its time, but GbE and USB2 left it without much to do, apart from cost more money for extra cables.

[@nicholastotoro7721]

So it's basically a giant Firewire JBOD with six time bombs in it... 🤣

[@Wxcafe]

a JBOD will not allow multiple concurrent users

[@jirkazima1126]

​@@WxcafeIn fact, there are SAS JBODs that can be used this way. This is even used in certain enterprise architectures. However, such a solution still needs a proper software configuration.

[@naganuina]

Yeah much more of a DAS than a SAN.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

...And highly proprietary driver software, for an OS that was being phased out at the time of release. This thing is the definition of e-waste.

[@nickwallette6201]

If those FW-to-IDE chipsets don't have any storage abstraction in them, that means that this was not just software RAID, but _the software_ would have to coordinate file system access between the other hosts. Bold move. (And by "bold," of course, I mean this is a terrible idea.)

[@mac27collection]

Really love the look of that thing, matches the Graphite color of the Power Mac G4s really well. I like how they even used the same color, size, and arrangement of exposed screws on the sides to further mirror the look. Great episode!

[@gaxiola1701]

About 25 years ago, the big CE company I worked for was trying to spread IEEE1394/FireWire beyond computers, hard drives and miniDV camcorders. I worked on a project for FireWire to be a standard A/V connection between HDTVs, D-VHS recorders and cable STBs. The technology worked for streaming between devices and even supported control and on-screen display overlays but never got deployed into production even though the devices had the connectors. It might've been usage rights concerns, a question of the future and cost of FireWire, or maybe the impending future of HDD-based DVRs.

[@tjimicole2677]

Your experience with Atto is yet another sad tale of how the digital age has destroyed long-term preservation of knowledge and functionality. "Not supported" isn't good enough. There should be rules in place that require companies to publicly archive all software they no longer support.

[@applemuzeumpolska]

The timing is interesting, an identical model arrived a few days ago and is being presented at the exhibition. Two disks are damaged, but the rest can be seen in Disk Utility. I also took it apart because it was very dirty. Now it looks great and is not scratched. After the post on the fan page, two former co-creators commented on their work on this device. Thanks for the video.

[@suvetar]

who might hav personal archives of the software?

[@andrewsmactips]

From the "Drape a Jellyfish Over It" school of design.

[@monerohero]

I have a copy of the disc that I can ship if you'd like

[@ThisDoesNotCompute]

Yes please! You can either send it my way (address is on my channel about page) or just upload an image to the Internet Archive. Thank you!

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

I'd make a backup before you send it, it's not uncommon to have discs get broken in the post

[@RealOny]

Make a backup on the internet archive ASAP, the disc could get damaged during shipping

[@Tumnus.B]

Use something like IMGBURN to make a ISO of the disc

[@hellterminator]

@@ThisDoesNotCompute If you need, um, help with the whole licensing thing, hit me up. I don't have an old Mac to debug it on, but provided the software isn't packed/obfuscated, I should be able to patch it with just static analysis.

[@Dutchreason]

It's a very nice brick. And now a more documented very nice brick. Thanks for the Show & Tell 👍

[@LordMegatherium]

Sir, please stop dropping precision oofdinance in this comment section.

[@Dutchreason]

@@LordMegatherium Those aren't even human words. Please elaborate. Please, "pray-tell" what is an "oof-di-nance"?

[@LordMegatherium]

@@Dutchreason it's a portmanteau of "Oof!" The exclamation when something's heavy or too real and ordinance as in explosives. So I was surprised (and slightly upset) that yes: it's just a slightly better documented paperweight. It was all for nil (save some content and a bit of documentation). It's a sad reality of dealing with old hardware that we rarely see on KZbin.

[@Fisha695]

As somebody who loves the late 90s/early 2000s "see through everything" styling I would absolutely find a way to build a little NAS/DAS inside this if I had one and the money to do it.

[@suvetar]

for giggles and shiggles, try attaching to the updater app with a kernel level debugger, the installker binary itself *should* have no business with the detection logic, which hopefully comes from the inside of the archive ... With the debugger attached, you will be able to find a breakpoint at the point the contents become readable and executable by the updater ... Could be fun to try anyhow! Good luck!

[@joetheman74]

OH NO!!! 6 DEATHSTARS! It will be amazing if ANY of them actually still work. I think a fun project would be to build a modern NAS running Linux in that case. You could do it inexpensively using a Rasberry Pi with a sata card and use OpenMediaVault as the NAS software.

[@volvo09]

I used to do desktop support in an office of roughly 1200 seats... We had a lot of these in IBM computers. I never noticed failure rates higher than other drives... It was back in the 30gb size era I believe.

[@raylopez99]

@@volvo09 Now that's old school. I recall back in the early 1990s a button on I think a x286 that said "turbo" and software that had a sticker that said "do not run this software under turbo mode' (since turbo made the software inoperable since the PC was too fast for it). Ah the good old days...they were terrible!

[@truectl]

@@volvo09Yes, this anecdote matches history. The big IBM “Deathstar” issue really started around the GXP60 / GXP75 series of drives, which came later. The issue was blown out of proportion by the memorable name, not by facts. The drives in the video are before this time and likely work fine. As another anecdote, I had many GXP60 and some of them had the failure mode - unusable sectors far into the disk. Updating the firmware on all the disks and setting the capacity for the affected drives a little smaller (using I believe Feature Tool) let all my drives run for over 15 years, until they were retired.

[@thegeforce6625]

@@truectlthe drives in the video ARE 75GXP’s, just the 45gb models. The likely reason they still work is due to being cooled properly due to the fan, if those drives ran without any form of cooling (even in normal desktop systems) they’d fail pretty often. I got a 75gb 75GXP a good while ago that had some 38k hours on it, worked fine with a few bad sectors on it. After a while, it started having issues with ever increasing amounts of bad sectors, i eventually found out that just about half the drive was unusable with bad sectors. Afterwards I limited the drives capacity to about 33gb or so, after that it works okay. (Though I haven’t fired it up in a few years so it may have died since then haha)

[@truectl]

@@thegeforce6625 Hm, I even went back to that point in the video to check the models but didn’t see that they were from that line, and dates looked older. Thanks for the clarification. But yes, the smaller capacity models didn’t suffer like the larger ones did. These sitting offline and cold with heads parked might still be fine after all these years.

[@tux7300]

Awesome video, appreciate people who take the time to review retro tech.

[@rickkarrer8370]

Great video. I know how frustrating and disappointing it can be to not get something fully working, but you still following though with an interesting and positive video on this product.

[@deannielsen2]

Is the plastic shiny/ glossy? If so you can fix that by buffing it out with a polishing compound called Quixx. You get two types: Quixx Paint and Quixx Plastic. The best repairs I've managed to do is to sand deep scratches out and evenly with 3000 Grit, then using the agressive Quixx Plastic to buff the entire panel to an even hazey look. This removes the sanding as it's an abrasive compound but the plastic needs more work. To finish it off to restore the transparency you need to use the Quixx Paint Tube 1 (Repair) to remove the microscrathing thats occured and finally finish off with generous dollops of Quixx Paint Tube 2 (Finish) to bring out a lusterous shine. If you can get the older oil based Quixx Paint in the metal paint tubes it will work even better but be warned, not only does it stink, this is laborious, time consuming work as it must be done by hand as power tools can potentially warp/ discolour the plastic if it gets too hot. Also, if the scratches are even deeper than 3000 Grit you will need higher grit but then you have a larger area to sand and buff back to original condition.

[@computersales]

Sad to think the software is lost because a company didn't feel like it was worth holding on to.

[@redleader6442]

Speaking of failing hard drives, I've noticed that you talk a lot about old SCSI drives being scarce due to failure. I highly recommend looking into early to mid 90s IBM drives for some of your restoration projects. They seem to last virtually forever, unlike old Quantums and Conners.

[@cdos9186]

Can't go wrong with an early IBM! Well unless it is one of those PS/2 stepper IBM drives where the platters rot...the early to mid 90s IBMs do seem to last forever, but the late 90s one's at least in my experience is hit or miss. I feel really bad for how many of those Quantum drives get thrown out due to the rubber melting which is fixable, I suspect within the next decade those are going to become rare drives as so many of them are failing this way it is at an astronomical level. Wish people would try and see what is wrong with the drive before tossing it or plugging in a solid state solution but that is personal choice...

[@Kohlenstoffkarbid]

This is a prove that we actually don't own out Hardware anymore since quite a long time. It stands here but the decision what runs and what not is been made elsewhere.

[@doalwa]

This is actually very interesting. SAN over FireWire…does it get any more early 2000s era than this?!?

[@5argetech56]

IBM DeathStar's Luke, your data is dead! Noooooo!

[@JamesTenniswood]

I'm still bitter about two dieing on my and taking much data with them!

[@autecheee]

‘This isn’t the RAID storage you were looking for’ Jedi mind trick

[@Thee_Dr_Evil]

these were dark days indeed.

[@cdos9186]

Kind of funny how all six in the video passed the seek and I have a full set that still work hehe. Just don't use them, and they don't die as both the video proves and my working units do. They often overheated due to poor ventilation in OEM cases and were not designed for 24/7 usage. Without being cooled well, they often easily get to 60c if running for an extended period of time. The more platters, the more heat they generated and quicker they would run hot and degrade due to this.

[@kuchenblechmafiagmbh1381]

@@cdos9186 Hold my ST3000DM001, these had exactly that issue, according to a data rescue company, the parking ramps for the heads were made of a mix of materials and these are prone to warp when the drive gets too warm, damaging the heads. I got one and it still works, however I used it in well ventilated cases, others weren't so lucky like Apple's 5th Gen Time Capsule, in 2021 they recommended to stop using it because of that (but what stops you from putting a different Hard Drive in, if it doesn't need a specialised firmware?). But weren't IDE and SCSI drives in general creating more heat?

[@tux7300]

Why did I click this so fast like I was expecting it to jump, dance and do magic tricks.

[@kingjoe3rd]

The classic "solution looking for a problem" product.

[@dawn1berlitz]

funnt thing is though they cant actually void the warranty of the device if the seal is broken or removed atleast in the us anyways as warranty seals was banned under the magnuson moss warranty act like corsair quit using them

[@sykoteddy]

From watching Linus Tech Tips on the matter I believe it is supposed to be a global thing. But no matter, time after time companies try to point to that sticker.

[@dawn1berlitz]

@@sykoteddy as far as i know the magnuson moss act only applied to the us im not familiar with warranty laws outside of the usa

[@mrb692]

Doesn’t matter to folks like Apple. I replaced my iphone’s cracked back myself, and when the selfie camera died they said tough luck, your unauthorized replacement voids your warranty. Reminding the employees that Magnuson-Moss is a law that exists didn’t do anything, and I suspect it would require taking Apple to court for them to believe it.

[@dawn1berlitz]

@@mrb692 ive never really changed anything in a failed corsair PSU and they taken it back no problem as i didnt do damage that could compromise functionality of it and they know i opened it after it had failed

[@ianmazursky275]

We had one at my job. It was great until it died. It was an expensive lesson in drive recovery and why you need a real server.

[@johncate9541]

Probably would have been fine if they had chosen more reliable HDDs. Running 2000-era Deathstars in RAID was the computing version of Russian Roulette.

[@ianmazursky275]

As I recall, the drives were fine but the raid was scrambled. I think we got back most of the data. The entire thing was chucked.

[@RoderikvanReekum]

This is one great Hard Drive!

[@andrewpbarry]

some years later apple had a similar solution with Xsan/Xraid, likely for the same market: media post-product, compositing, broadcasting. Though, as you say, with the benefit of real fibre channel.

[@GoingtoHecq]

It's self defeating to have a clear plastic shell when there is just a sheet steel cube beneath it.

[@HappyQuailsLC]

Unless it makes it more attractive and marketable.

[@kuchenblechmafiagmbh1381]

It's seemingly for EMI shielding, I've also seen some prebuilt PCs in MediaMarkt (German BestBuy, but not with "DIY" parts but by OEMs like Asus etc.) that had clear side panels but with a peforated metal sheet behind that so that it looked like the window of a microwave oven. And the window was also seemingly made of plastics/acrylic "glass" in 2018/2019 when tempered real glass was already widespread. But yeah, they could have made it more attractive with some painting of the metal part (or make it out of stainless steel instead of cheapo grey zinc-plated).

[@stuartcastle2814]

Interesting product. I prefer it without the plastic casing though. However, the product does seem like a stopgap. It seems like something cheap (or relatively so) that a company would buy until they could justify, or afford, a proper solution..

[@sQuEeZyMaN13]

I’d stick some kind of modern USB RAID controller in this, with some new drives, just to keep that 2000’s style case. Especially in 2024, hard disk drives are a super cheap.

[@michaelturner2806]

Really bold to put it all back together without any testing, especially seeing several deathstars in there.

[@combusean]

Apparently these devices and the company were awful. Just saw this come across one of my facebook groups from Apple Museum Polska in "Retro Microcomputers, Workstations, Servers and Consoles - Welcome!" "I remember providing support for a TV studio when Micronet went out of business. The studio's SANCube had been sent out for warranty repair and went missing. I called in and was able to get a tech to find it sitting a bench, in pieces, and had them send it back before the place shut down. So many repeat situations like that in the biz. Never worked that well. Imagine a DMA level device connected to 4 hosts, relying on a software driver under MacOS 8-9. 😂"

[@applemuzeumpolska]

Thank you for reading our posts, a few days ago an identical SANcube array arrived at the museum from Spain, and an interesting comment was posted under the post on our fanpage by the former co-creator of the device who patented it.

[@ericlotze7724]

I recently got an old (Mini) DV Broadcast Camera, the Digital Out is Firewire so i would love to learn of any *modern* workflows for using a Firewire Card / Adapter. Relatable hunt for software in this video lol, keep up the good work.

[@sykoteddy]

You most likely need to use Linux and some open source software for that. Unless you try using a virtual machine. I recently tried it with Linux but with USB 2.0 but only Firewire seem to work, but I didn't have the energy to install Linux on an old laptop I have that has a Firewire card, but I might try it in the near future. For example, the Panasonic Thoughbook C-53 has Firewire. If you need a Firewire PCI card and cabling I have and are willing to sell within Europe if you pay postage, hell I'd even send it to you for only the postage, I hate to see tech go to waste instead of being used. With that I can also send an external chassi for a DVD drive made by Lacie back in the day.

[@eDoc2020]

If you just want to record to digital files you can use WinDV. It's tiny, free, and worked fine with the last version of Windows 10 I tried. Any decent video editor should handle DV-AVI files, or if desired you can deinterlace and convert to a more modern codec. If you want a purely modern workflow (likely without audio) you don't need any special software. Under Windows a DV camera can be used as a webcam by any normal application.

[@mbirth]

Just make sure to install the "1394 OHCI Legacy" driver. Otherwise, you can control the DV camera, but won't see any video input - just a black screen. Microsoft removed the video features from their shipped driver in Windows 10 or newer.

[@Naitrio]

With my DV camera, I use premiere pro cs5 (cc2024 sadly dropped support for this) which can record to and from the camera using firewire. I think windows movie maker can also capture the footage, but it's not exactly modern lol.

[@mbirth]

@@Naitrio Might be that Premiere includes this driver. On a plain Windows 10 it didn't work for me. I was able to remote control the DV device, even got audio, but no video.

[@Drmcclung]

I remember seeing products like these here and there in high-end boutique web design centers and print shops which I think was their targeted environment. If memory serves a third party made a FireWire to LAN hub to extend these things into the NAS era. Unfortunately ATA-133 just never had the throughput to take full advantage of FireWire, and I'm not exactly 100% sure any one of these old products ever fully made it out of the ATA-100 controller era before SATA obsoleted IDE altogether. Anyhow fun video, it's neat to see forgotten niche storage devices 😂

[@eDoc2020]

ATA-133 _always_ had enough throughput to take full advantage of FireWire. FW400 is theoretically 50 MB/s and ATA-133 is 133MB/s.

[@Drmcclung]

@@eDoc2020 In 1999 you were lucky to get a third of that transfer rate disk-to-disk with two IDE drives in the same machine on the same cable. There's a valid reason more high dollar FireWire storage devices of this era ran the SCSI interface until SATA superseded all of it in the prosumer NAS/SAN market. IDE from this era, in the real world, came nowhere close to advertised speeds even with top of the line 7200rpm disks. To be honest storage cubes like these were pretty much used to back up data and that's about it. They were too slow for proper filesharing

[@Drmcclung]

@@eDoc2020 actually I take that back, some very very very early NexSAN's used IDE drives right at the tail end of IDE and they were.. OK.. but I think they were getting their throughput from two striped raid 0's (not quite raid 10 but something proprietary they were doing at the hardware level with some super fast cache, and gigabit Ethernet). Aside from that SCSI & SATA still blew it away.

[@bentboybbz]

People now act like spinning hard drives are going to fail catastrophically within 3 months or something, there are drives out there that are still working after 30+ years, I've had mechanical drives that I bought used last me 12 years, heat, vibration, temperature changes, shocks, and programs that cause your hard drive to constantly run kill them, I am currently running an enterprise grade drive I bought used 7 years ago as a boot drive in one PC, it's from 2013 😂 iPod's used to have mechanical spinning drives in them, it was always surprising that they could survive that type of punishment, and SSDs have a finite amount of reads and writes its expected to work for too

[@volvo09]

Yeah, I've never really had bad luck with hard drives. I did desktop support for a large company for 12y and would test drives we pulled from systems, usually the vast majority were fine and someone just blamed a boot problem on "a bad hard drive" and replaced it. Laptops did have the most real failures, but even all my old retro 486, Pentium, and P3 laptops and desktops still have their OEM hard drives going strong. (I want the full experience, no SSD's in my retro machines).

[@tothemaxx1991]

I have a dead 2019 1tb drive and twelve working (and five dead) 1980/90ss MFM drives. It's kind of a toss up. I'm a drive hoarder for no apparent reason.

[@hellterminator]

Not hard drives in general, IBM Deskstars. There's a reason people called them Deathstars back in the day.

[@Hchris101]

LONG LIVE FIREWIRE!!!!!

[@Chaos_God_of_Fate]

Would be kinda neat to convert one of these into a micro/mini ATX PC build

[@FlatEarthDisciple]

I wish that design aesthetic would return in physical plastics and GUIs as well. Though I was never much of a Mac user, I adored the look of OS 9 and also KDE 2. lol. I was one of the first to adopt Object Desktop as well, which I still use today when running windows. 😂

[@Markimark151]

It looks like they ripped off the Power Mac G4 Cube! Or probably it was taken from the style of iMac G3! Too bad you couldn’t get it to fully work, due to design flaws! This would’ve been good for G3 iMacs at the time, since they were used in schools and businesses that have big projects that can be shared across multiple computers!

[@readtedium]

I did dig into a later version of the driver page and found a link to the original Firewire extensions. But of course the link was dead. :( Le sigh.

[@will_it_work]

Like others have said on here, you should have tried it in early version of Mac OS X. Many times, those drivers were built-in to OS X.

[@Kumimono]

I would think those humongous FireWire logos on the sides would give the secret away rather quickly. :D

[@GarthBeagle]

Love quirky FireWire stuff like this

[@retrogaminggenesis6102]

It's wild you would this as I'm considering making a FireWire NAS due due the fact old FireWire equipment is cheap and I can run both modern and vintage computers off it faster than my internet connection. Guess it's a sign 😂

[@tonycosta3302]

I have an old WD Studio RAID drive that I connected to an old MacMini. It’s used as a home server.

[@net_news]

firewire is better and more verstile than any modern connection thanks to daisy chaining. It was the real scsi successor, sata and esata aren't so versatile and thunderbolt is so complex and expensive that nobody uses it. Firewire was the perfect compromise.

[@mccrh7737]

Very nice looking device, It would make a sweet sleeper NAS 😉

[@CrystallisedEntertainment]

This device reminds me an awful alot like the modern-day Jellyfish Server; the fact you need to "direct attach" all your clients, all the settings for the pool/array, users and mounting is all done in special software are all things that both servers have in common. Of course there is several differences between the SANcube and Jellyfish's implementation of these similar features - but the fact ( that I believe) is the OG Jellyfish control software was Mac only makes me think that is an early 00's version of Jellyfish, and that is personally very cool to see someone had a similar idea of such a server 23 (or so) years ago! 😆

[@emanuellopes6166]

This is the Pain Channel, every video is a massive one

[@ThePrimaFacie]

Great chill informative vid as usual. That disk spin up is like ASMR. Could I ask that when you bring up how something looked before you add a comparison shot could be just a previous few sec vid blip or maybe an over produced duplicate placing of said object as almost a mirror of a before and after. I bring it up because a feeling of satisfaction that if shown I wouldn't have the want to stop the vid and see how big of a difference there is. Then again not doing that might boost interaction and the algorithm likes it. IDK just a thought thanks for the vid

[@ThePrimaFacie]

Thinking about it further I realize that IF you do do (ha ha) a before and after, that would make a somewhat easy shrots set up. Although it could be a blurred after and a talk about what and where the item came from. The easiest hook you can make for new viewers. IDK just a thought, have a good one

[@kirderf85]

The FireSCSI name could indicate it uses SCSI over firewire, which technically would make it a SAN, sort of. Except it's over firewire and not a network. SAN is not to be confused with NAS.

[@calculusentropy]

I remember these. DTP people and Ad folks used them. A few computers on a desk and it was fast. Wayyyyy cheaper than fibre channel, and no port licensing nonsense. Anywho I'm sure someone has the software, look forward to an update.

[@SeanCC]

I'm not sure about your conclusion on this. This is a device that would have been tailor made for editorial teams at a time when DV editing was extremely popular. Whether it would be teams working on reality television or students in a classroom situation, this device would have been tailor made for a huge market at the time. You're trying to look at it from a general purpose SAN standpoint and only appreciating its connectivity to Macs from the most basic functioning.

[@Lukeno52]

I wonder what it would do if it was hooked up to a Windows machine? Sony were a big pusher of FireWire as well, although most of their laptops would have one of the micro connectors instead.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Yes but you still need the PowerFile and the red and yellow small VST FireWire drives. And a Que! CD-R.

[@TomasGregovich]

Wouldn't this be considered a DAS (directly attatched storage) since it has no network connectivity?

[@iamdarkyoshi]

Huh, I've got a plain external hard drive by Fantom Drives. Never knew they had an interesting history

[@tonycosta3302]

It’s so much better looking without the plastic shell. I would have left it off.

[@coolduder1001]

damnit now i want one so I can retrofit it for a modern basic NAS

[@RandomGreymane]

You can put SO many things in that size case now. A serious SSD NAS for instance. A giant Raspberry PI cluster. The weirdest network switch or router ever. Tons of stuff!

[@cdos9186]

Even though that external enclosure can't be used due to software that you can't get now, all of those hard drives inside can be used or resold for certain. Also all six of those definitely passed their self-test, would be neat to see if you tested them...I would personally expect a few bad sectors here and there, but a good zero with a utility would cause the bad spots to get reallocated and then the entire drive surface can be useable again, don't expect a perfect health drive over 20 years old of course but better than tossing the entire external enclosure with useable parts inside.

[@stormriders1186]

wonder if it would work with a windows machine over firewire using storage spaces or something similar under linux.

[@volvo09]

That thing is actually pretty cool, too bad it's useless. The design language aligns with Macs of the era too, bet that sat amungst some PowerMac G3's at some studio...

[@georgesenda1952]

I looked on Ebay and there is an HP Micronet for sale but yours is nowhere to be found. Micronet used to sell Mac products, was based in Fresno, Ca. and went out of business in 2009.

[@WaynePittenger]

To be honest, I think it looks better without the plastic shell.

[@GregCoonrod]

Honestly, it looks a lot cooler and more modern without the exterior plastics.

[@numeristatech]

Heart sank when you removed the cover to reveal an IBM Deathstar. It may be early enough to not be the 70GXP that head crashed so bad that it stripped the spinning rust from the glass platters.... but the model type matches even if the fru pn doesn't... so... beware of the deathstar head crash!

[@cirian75]

Nice to know Micronet is still around though.

[@BaldEaglePC]

were the thing not so intentionally unserviceable, I think it'd make for a very good looking case for a "chameleon" build

[@TheDuumiMuumi]

Kinda interesting box! I have similar weird box called Promise SmartStor DS4600, holds up to 4 hot-swappable SATA hard drives and uses USB 2.0, eSATA or FireWire. And that also creates RAID, uses Windows utility for that(which luckily is still available). I have it loaded up with 4x 1TB drives, it's one of my backup drives :)

[@goofballbiscuits3647]

Home and small business san? No...? Your grandkids are gonna love it 😅

[@lyonadimral]

Would love to see you do a video on Drobo's.

[@imark7777777]

It's a FireWire episode!!!!!!!! I wonder if they were allowing each interface to directly see the unit or if they were doing some sort of IP over Fireware networking and sharing off of one of the clients? Would be curious what a 10.4 system would think of that thing. They might've been doing soft raid.

[@LuxorVan]

On the mac os x server 1.0 wiki it mentions the sancube and says something about buyers being forced to use appleshare ip to access them until osx 10 came out.

[@padawanmage71]

I wonder as some PCs had IEEE 1394 were there any Windows based software to try?

[@RikiHorizon]

It's tragic the firewire symbol couldn't have lived on. I love a good space age rune

[@LizVanLee]

when you want to design a cube but also are anticipating frutiger aero is gonna hit big

[@stuffwhy3501]

Great video. You made a great video even for a thing you couldn't make work. That's extra impressive.

[@Aeduo]

I guess intended as a hot storage thing for large data but also as a turnkey solution. Expecting users would have some cold backup solution. But something you could set down in an office or studio or something and not worry about... Until you have to replace it.

[@HappyQuailsLC]

If you rub a little food grade oil into those scratches and then polish the surrounding surfaces, you may be able to improve their appearance.

[@PeterBrockie]

Did you try out the dip switches on the back? Maybe they force it into a dumb mode or something. Worth trying out the different switch combinations if the documentation you found doesn't say what they do.

[@BaMb1N079]

I used a lot of IBM DTLA-307030 drives back in the day. They died like flies........but hey, they were the fastest IDE drives available.....

[@cdos9186]

Odd that you say that, I still have about eight 30GB models that work mostly right now, some of them even test as perfect with the S.M.A.R.T! Most have reallocated sectors though, but not horrible considering their history. The problem from what I can tell is the fact they overheated to heck due to crappy OEM case cooling. The more platters the drive had too, the hotter it would get. They are one of my favorite early 2000s drives still. I love how fast they are, how they sound, and just the overall quality feel they have in the hand. Also if you want a tip, the best way to keep one working is to literally not use the drive haha. As the video shows, all six of the 45GB units in that enclosure passed the self-test just fine!

[@darwiniandude]

This old external hard drive can do WHAT?! - Nothing, anymore, sadly...

[@cdos9186]

Not sure why he didn't even try to take all six drives out and test them since the actual external enclosure itself can't be used, I guess that isn't his thing considering he replaces repairable drives like the Quantum's with CF cards and BlueSCSI...I'm almost certain that all six of those drives still work since they passed their self-test just fine! The proper ventilation that unit had certainly helped keep them alive would be sad if he tosses the whole thing because of some dumb software you can't get anymore. The external enclosure may not be useable, but the hard drives sure are a great thing to have and if not you can always sell them to other people who need them or would like to purchase them...

[@Vednier]

"...relies on non-standard commercial software requiring serial numbers and activation to work" - this is kinda sad. Thats why one should stick to standards even if they not so robust as tricky custom software. I can guess pirated version with leaked serial codes could exist if it was not so niche product.

[@danielktdoranie]

Love the early 00s Apple aesthetic

[@net_news]

me too it was really unique and creative

[@jasmijndekkers]

Its a nice machine. Keep up the good job. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

[@stevenv2190]

Well, the warranty is past due. Not to mention that those stickers are now not legally binding. YIKES!!! IBM "Deathstar" drives. Miracle if any of them work...

[@lemagreengreen]

IBM DeathStars and it had never been opened!? it's a miracle!

[@cdos9186]

Well, all six passed their self-test and probably work still haha. I know because I have over a dozen I've collected and I'm familiar with how they are. Part of the problem was how hot OEM PC cases would get due to poor ventilation, which would then cause the drive to overheat and degrade fast. Also IBM stated that these drives were not designed for 24/7 operation, yet people disregarded this and used them in servers and RAID configuration anyways which of course did not go well. With proper ventilation, the drive would last significantly longer since it wouldn't run hot all the time. I've seen them get above 60c which cooks the media and increases the risk of the drive crashing the heads onto the platters. If you keep the drive cool, and don't use it too often, they definitely can last. I have a whole set that works granted most have reallocated sectors, but the drives are 20+ years old so I think that is reasonable to not expect the drive to be perfect especially considering the history. Also did you notice how those drives were well ventilated in that enclosure by the fan and airflow? That is a huge reason they probably all still were able to seek just fine...the media didn't get toasted due to extreme temperatures. They do heat up fast, especially the higher end models with more platters inside generating more heat...

[@ErazerPT]

Interesting, and yeah... the cable length restrictions... FW was also a "cheap" half gig thing for plain TCP/IP, but... yeah, cable length... Still, a worthy niche thing, in the case all your machines were close to each other, all had FW and the "NAS cube" was cheaper than adding an extra box just as a file server.

[@TheSliderW]

I know the idea is to get the desired functionality on the period correct hardware and software, but, have you tried this on Linux or Windows ? Got some results when looking for info on those LSI SymBIOS chips. Support was supposedly added to windows in 97 so you might have some luck using an old 98se/XP install. On the Linux side, Fedora had support up to 9 as far as I can tell and maybe later releases as well.

[@rBennich]

It looks so much better without the plastic covers.

[@liliwinnt6]

the ide ribbon cable wasn't a 80-conductor type, the file transferring speed won't be too impressive

[@eDoc2020]

They could still force faster speeds with a 40 wire cable. Also it doesn't matter. Three channels of 33MB/s will easily saturate a FW400 link.

[@liliwinnt6]

okie dokie

[@mattb9664]

He voided the warranty! You can't do that! Ah yes- one of 'those' searches where the actual search becomes pretty frustrating. Similar to trying to find out whether there are actual deleted scenes or alternate scenes from the movie BIG that were actually aired in the northern NJ and NYC area.

[@mcatlow8]

It’s amazing to think that a phone can have more memory than this thing.