Re: ProDOS 32MB limit?

[Chet Gerhardt <transit@wco.com>]

Michael Kelsey (Journey finatic) <mkelsey@eecs.wsu.edu> wrote:
: For over two years now I have been heavily involved in the PC market, dis-
: banding my Apple II usage when my Color Monitor //e failed to turn on one
: day.

: Over this period I have acquired numerous hard drives ranging in size from
: 40MB to 100MB, all SCSI by nature.  The SCSI interface inside my Apple II
: is an off-brand AEC low-cost solution that has the ability to recognize
: a single hard drive as one two partitions, but nothing more despite the
: hard drive size.  It will also recognize two separate hard drives, peaking
: at 32MB per drive.

: Effectively, I lose space when connecting a 100MB SCSI drive versus a 60MB
: drive, imposed by the limitations of ProDOS.  The software provided with
: the controller recognizes the size of the hard drive even though it spans
: well above the 32MB limit. 
(Snip)

Michael,

Without loading the band width, I simply suggest that you get a new SCSI
controller, I use a Ramfast on my IIe and have 3-105 Meg SCSI Drives on
it.  I believe in mechanical redundancy, but there is no reason that you
could not use a 500 Meg HD with the right card.  You will still have to
live with the 32 meg limit, as no one did a ProDOS version that supported
more than that.  The IIgs operating system does not have that problem.

With a good SCSI card you can have a lot of 32 meg partitions.  315 Megs
is more than I'll ever need on a IIe, I don't even get close. The problem
is that the real Old SCSI cards just don't support the bigger HD's we have
these days.  With a Ramfast you can even have partitions that you simply
turn off if you don't need them, the High Speed SCSI Cards via Apple are
the other viable alternative.

Best Regards,

Chet