Re: Sick IIGS CMS Combo

[crapd_obenauf@juno.com (Dave Obenauf)]

	Thanks to everyone who responded to my post about the problem
I'm having with a IIGS and new CMS SCSI card. FYI, I'm pretty sure I
have the latest (ver 3) rom on the CMS card, it's not printed on
anything and I haven't seen a splash confirming it, but tech support
at Alltech says the ROM takes care of everything but boot delay/spinup
phasing which is setable with the front-most jumper set. I have
confirmed that it does control the boot delay from about 10 seconds to
almost a minute. I can't confirm the spin up phasing as I only have
one drive and probably couldn't tell the difference without a timer.
	As far as the other hardware goes, the drive is properly
terminated externally. I have two terminators and two SCSI cables,
both sets as well as the drive and external case hardware have been
independently verified on both Macintosh and PC platforms (with the
drive jumpers properly set, of course). I pretty sure there is nothing
wrong with the hardware beyond the SCSI port on the computer.
	I tried all combinations of suggestions regarding phasing of
powering up hardware, including leaving the drive on for a couple
hours before starting the computer, none with any more success than I
was used to. I did experience the case where the computer "crashes" if
it is shut down and then restarted without powering down the HD. I
noticed that unplugging the card from the computer fixes this, and
Alltech tech support conformed that the drive supplies power to the
computer through the SCSI bus, which keeps the memory from zeroing out
for a clean start. However, the three fingered salute
(command-option-restart) always restarted the computer from this
state. 
	The latest ROM must have cured the problem of the partition
info being stored in on the card, because Alltech was kind enough to
exchange my first card for another. The second card didn't have any
trouble recognizing the partitions and even the partition names were
correct.
	My biggest concern with this whole smash was that I purchased
a defective card, one with a marginal component that will quit the day
after the warranty runs out. It seems the consensus of all is this
just a flaky card that was probably never designed to be used on a
IIGS. I suspect that the card's controller and boot code don't come up
fast enough to correctly answer the system bus (or whatever you call
those edge connectors in the MB) when polled, but sometimes will. I
suspect that previous versions of Apple II were slower and probably
had more code to execute at boot time prior to polling the bus.
Incidentally, I tried the system at the standard Apple II speed to no
avail.
	This weekend I had it set up in the garage and every time I
walked by, I tried to boot it. More and more often, it booted from the
HD. Perhaps a little burn-in will be the charm. It's currently powered
up, but not running this week, waiting for a soft reboot next weekend.
We'll have to see.
	Regarding the solution, the most sage advice I received was
this: "Start the thing up and if it boots from the HD, don't turn it
off. I haven't turned mine off in years". This works for two reasons.
The first is the software turnoff feature similar to Mac. The second
is that it will restart correctly even if you turn the drive off, as
long as the drive is spun up. If it doesn't, just wait a while and
give it the three fingered salute. I plan to connect the monitor and
drive to power through a power strip and plug the computer straight to
the wall. Then, it's just a matter of waiting for the drive to spin up
and clicking on "Restart".

Thanks again for all the help
Dave Obenauf