Re: Hard Drive Questions

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

In article <3cl2bf$4ak@panix2.panix.com>,
Mark Mentovai <moxie@panix.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm using ProDOS 2.0.3, so my SCSI card can be in any slot.  (Would slot 
> seven be a viable option?

Yes.

> If not, would my Disk ][ drives work in slot 5 if I put the SCSI in
> slot 6?)

Yes, but there is quite a bit of software that expects the Disk ][
controller to be in slot 6, so I would not recommend doing this.  If
you cannot put the SCSI card in slot 7 for some reason, I'd recommend
putting it in slot 5, and setting up a dummy pre-boot disk which you
leave in drive 1 of the Disk ][, which boots slot 5 (a simple BASIC
program can do this).

> And what exactly is SmartPort?

SmartPort can mean two different things:

- The disk port used on the IIc and IIgs, which accepts intelligent
(SmartPort) drives.  (The IIc and IIgs also accept 5.25" drives, and
the IIgs and IIc+ will accept an Apple 3.5 drive, which is not
intelligent, but other SmartPort interfaces may not support these
devices).

- A protocol used to call disk interface cards.  This is what I meant
in this case.  ProDOS recognises disk devices that support the
SmartPort call protocol (which was known as the "Protocol Converter"
in older documentation).

The SmartPort call protocol is an extension of the ProDOS block device
protocol.  Both of these are special ROM routines in the disk interface
card that provide standard calls (read, write, status, format, etc.)
for all disk interface cards EXCEPT the Disk ][ (which predates it).
There are a few older devices that provide a ProDOS block driver (so
they will work with ProDOS) but don't provide a Smartport driver.
The best example of this is the ProFILE interface card, and possibly
some third-party SCSI cards.

The Apple and RamFAST SCSI cards support the SmartPort protocol, as do
the IIc and IIgs slot 5 firmware (distinct from the slot 6 firmware,
which is used to boot 5.25" disks), the Apple II Memory Expansion Card,
the RAMFactor and similar "slinky" memory cards, the PC Transporter,
the SuperDrive card, Universal Disk Controller (I think), etc.

> Will I have to configure anything, or will the partitions
> automatically be remapped?

No - it all happens magically.  The first two partitions will appear
as drives 1 and 2 of the slot containing the SCSI card, then the others
will be mapped to unused slots starting at slot 1 and working up.

> : 32 megabytes per partition (65535 blocks, which is 32767.5 kilobytes).
> 
> Since I have six slots without any disk controllers, then I should be 
> able to get a maximum of 394MB hard disk and partition it into twelve 32MB 
> sections, right?  (Normally I would only get a small disk but since it's 
> SCSI it will work with my next computer...if I ever get one, right?)

You can't use S3,D2, so that limits you to eleven partitions, for a
total of 352 megabytes.  You may be limited to less than that.  For
example, the original Apple SCSI card only supports seven partitions.
The Apple High-speed SCSI card supports 111 (spread over all drives).

I don't know what the limit of the RamFAST is.

The other problem is partitioning.  The best partitioning program for
the Apple II SCSI cards is Chinook SCSI Utilities, which is a
commercial program that is in limbo, since Chinook got out of the
Apple II market.  It only supports nine partitions (or thereabouts).

I doubt you could find much of a use for that much disk space on a
IIe, unless you're doing something like digitizing sounds or graphics.
It isn't so hard on a IIgs, because the applications tend to be bigger,
and there are a lot more of them.

> Thank you very much, Mr. Empson!  As usual, your knowledge of the Apple 
> II will be a great help to me.

You're welcome.

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