Vulcan based SSD Apple II/gs

["Mayor" <noeone@nowhe.re>]

Yeah I am still out here and still tinkering...



Well  I have been working on this thing for some time and FINALLY got it 
working so thought I would let others know it IS possible and  also to crow 
about it:  I succeeded in  connecting an old Vulcan IDE card to a Compact 
Flash to IDE converter card and thereby creating a (sort of) SSD drive Apple 
II.

There were  a few caveats, disappointments, reasons to swear along this 
weird way.

First of all, I have a Vulcan card I purchased off eBay.  It was a 1st gen 
Rom card to which I upgraded by adding a cloned 1990 vintage Rev 2  Vulcan 
ROM chip to - I happened to have a spare ROM  in the weird cards box..

  Next, as the CF adapter requires power I hooked up the Vulcan power supply 
and ran a power plug to the inside then hooked that to the 2 live pins on 
the card.  I think you could do this from the standard power for a fan plug 
inside the GS but I have yet to try that.  but I will.

Next you need a compact flash but not just ANY Compact Flash, I have a stack 
from my years of playing with CF<>PCMCIA for use in a Newton.   The 
procedure is the same.

 1 load CF in the carrier,

 2 power up with a Vulcan floppy in the drive.

 3 Run Parts.Manager



 I built a ProDOS floppy because I was sick of the Load GS/Os launch 
Parts.Manager wait wait wait..

If it formats jump for joy.  If not.  Power off and start over

So far:   SanDisks of size 32 64 and 128mb  do NOT work.  Kodak of 32 and 
256mb do not work.  Memorex of 16mb does not work.

What DOES work is one ancient HP 4mb CF or a Lexmark 16 mb though a 32mb 
Lexmark does NOT work.

II am looking for more cards to try but these antiques are hard to come by 
in our thirst for the next gigabyte of storage.

Currently I have GS/OS loaded on the 16mb Lexmark and this II/GS boots like 
it has a hard drive.  Quite except for the fan on the power supply.



-Bart  Keeper of the Network from Heck