Re: Hard drive in a GS

[zelix@winternet.com (Zelix)]

Jerry W. Jordak (jwj2@po.cwru.edu) wrote:
: Hello,
: 
: Last night I acquired a secondhand Apple IIGS with 3.5" and 5.25" floppy
: drives. Scrawled in pencil on the front of the machine is "HD problems...
: reinitialize!" Now the only GS machines I had ever used before were in
: my high school, and they didn't have hard drives. I didn't even know they
: were made for the IIGS.

Apple never shipped an Apple II with a hard drive from the factory.
There are a lot of ways to add a hard drive to your Apple IIGS with
third-party hardware (or Apple's own SCSI or High-Speed SCSI card).

: So I took the machine apart, and the power supply a sticker on the front
: which says "20 Meg" and a ribbon cable going to a card with the name
: "Applied Engineering" on it. So I am assuming that this machine has a 
: 20 MB hard drive from a third-party company called Applied Engineering.

If the "power supply" is black, it's a Vulcan 20MB hard drive.  It's
a combination heavy-duty power supply/20MB IDE hard drive, with an
IDE controller card.

: But, when I turn the machine on, it acts like the drive isn't even there.
: I have not played around with it since, but I am assuming that the drive
: needs to be reinitialized. How can I do that, and before that, how do I
: make the machine recognize the drive? Or at least can somebody tell me
: something or anything about this hard drive?

Go to the control panel (hold down open-apple and control and then hit
<esc>, then select "Control Panel") and be sure that, under "Slots,"
Slot 7 is set to "Your Card" (if the Vulcan controller is in another
slot other than Slot 7, either set that slot to "Your Card," or I
reccomend you move the card to Slot 7).  Then, set the Startup Slot
to 7 to boot off of the hard drive.

The Vulcan was always advertised as being very durable (remember the
ads in the front cover of Nibble & InCider- "The GS was thrown off of
a table and dragged 7 feet, and the Vulcan still didn't have bad blocks"
:)   ), and mine still hasn't gotten one (although I don't use my 2nd
GS all that much anymore).  If you do need to reinit the drive, I'd
reccomend using AE's own Part Manager (did you get the Vulcan disk,
which has the Vulcan driver (not necessary, but it speeds up access
a bit under GS/OS) and the Part Manager?).  In Part Manager, you can
type in "AE" to low-level format your drive (it's kind of an easter
egg so that ppl don't accidentally wipe their drives :)  ).

: (Forgive me if I sound clueless, but I haven't touched any type of Apple 
: II in probably 5+ years.... :-)

hehe Welcome back to the loop :)

: For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. -- Philippians 1:21

Nice tag! :)


Peter

-- 
 _Zelix@winternet.com_____Apple IIGS Forever-Mac Never!_______JesusisLord!_
|Peter Handel  www.stolaf.edu/people/handel Student UNIX Systems Programmer|
|"God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" - 1 Cor. 10:v13|
|______Whatdoesitprofitaman,togainafortune,andyetloseyoursoul? - MWS_______|