Re: Hacking DIGICARD SRC2 server...

[mister_boffo@hotmail.com (Mr. Boffo)]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 09:55:26 -0600, Dennis Jenkins <dennis@usb.com>
wrote:

>What is this device?
>
>"Mr. Boffo" wrote:
>> 
>> Damn, another hurdle for hacking my old Digicard system, which is
>> sitting in my bedroom serving to my IIgs. The drive image does not
>> work when raw-copied to another drive of a different size.

It's an antique file server for the Apple II, Mac, and PCs. It has a
custom-designed motherboard and operating system, serving up files
from a SCSI hard drive to the Appletalk-compatible "PhoneNet" cabling
or to an Ethernet-compatible network.

It can support up to 96 simultaneous users, and apparantly can handle
up to a 13 gig SCSI hard drive. The Mandrake network management
software lets you set up different access for different users, so
there can be many more ProDOS volumes on the thing than an Apple II
could normally support just by having different login names to access
all the various volumes.

My primary interest is that unlike the Apple SCSI card, this thing
also supports plain old DOS 3.3 on the network. It can even serve up
Apple CP/M and Pascal software on the network. So it is far and above
more capable than just having an Apple SCSI card and ProDOS..


Apple II/IIgs usage requires a specially-designed "D-Net" network card
to connect to the PhoneNet cabling. Mac usage typically involves
special INITs to find the server on the PhoneNet cabling. With the
addition of a slot 1 jumper card, the D-Net card can reroute printing
from each networked Apple II to a single "classroom network printer"..

Although the cabling is AppleTalk compatible, the Digicard doesn't
speak Appletalk, hence the special network card for a IIgs and drivers
for the Mac, both of which have Appletalk support builtin.


Tech support for this thing does actually still exist, but the company
in question usually deals with large institutions and "bills them
accordingly". It does not discount for "invidual hobbyists" such as
myself.

I do not care to blow a grand for a bigger hard drive (yep, it'd cost
a thousand bucks to get a $150 SCSI drive formatted and set up), so
instead I'm seeing if I can do it myself. (At that price I might as
well use this thing as a doorstop and suffer along with just ProDOS on
an Apple SCSI card.)

-Mr. Boffo

Email: mister_boffo@hotmail.com