Re: CMS SCSI cards for Apple IIgs - Any good??

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article "Garth Beagle" <dalecoop@ix.netcom.com> writes...

>I am thinking of buying one of those CMS SCSI cards for my Apple IIgs and
>was wondering if anyone had any opinion on them - are they any good?   Any
>problems with them or things to look out for?  I was hoping to get one to
>hook a hard disk up to my ROM 1 IIgs with an maybe try hooking a zip disk to
>try as well.

    I would strongly advise against it. There are a number of issue 
which make the CMS SCSI board a poor option. First of all its ProDOS
partitioning scheme is incompatible with other boards, so you would
not be able to access your hardrive from other Apple IIgs's, possibly 
even Macintosh's. Setting partition sizes is no easy task either, you 
have to set jumpers on the board. If I'm not mistaken it won't even
support more than 2 partitions or so, in otherwords that would leave
you stuck with just a 60 megabyte device (too small to be usable on
an Apple IIgs, at least looking at things realistically).

    Another problem is the card doesn't support (or handle well to 
say the least) any removable devices. It was designed to work with
CMS SCSI hardrives and not really much more, an IOmega Zip drive
would not be an option. Also keep in mind it does not support DMA,
so access time will be rather slow. In my book, the minimum setup
on an Apple IIgs should be a 120 MB hardrive with a DMA controller.

    There are three standard SCSI cards, stick to those: 'RamFAST',
'Apple High-Speed' and 'Apple Rev C'. Only the RamFAST is still
being sold today, and thankfully, it is the best option for a IIgs.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca