Re: IIgs and CMS SCSI

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Rick Hatton <hattonr@aug.com> wrote:

> I would like to hook my SCSI Zip drive to my IIgs. Is a CMS SCSI card
> adequate to do this?

I would strongly discourage it.  The CMS card is designed to work with
CMS hard drives, and not much else.  I don't know if it can handle
removable SCSI devices (the original Apple SCSI card's firmware cannot,
and the CMS card is about the same level of antiquity).  It might not be
able to handle more than 64 MB either, so even if you can get the card
to work with the ZIP drive, you may not be able to access all of the
disk.

Another problem is that the CMS card doesn't support the standard
partitioning scheme used by other Apple II SCSI cards.  It uses a set of
jumpers on the card to configure the partition sizes, and doesn't
support the partition map mechanism at all.  In other words, it uses
"hard partitioning".

See if you can get hold of an Apple or RamFast SCSI card, which follow
all the standards as far as partitioning goes.

Note that the problem with non-support of removable devices only applies
to the original Apple SCSI card, not the high-speed one, and even then
it only applies under ProDOS-8.  You just need to be careful not to
switch disks without rebooting, because it won't realize that a new disk
(potentially with different partitioning) is in the drive.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand