Syquest & RamFAST -- questions

[unknown@apple.com (Matt Ackeret)]

	I finally got my Syquest 105 hooked up [which I bought on a whim 
in January and have been slow in buying a case for as I've been looking for
a small one -- ended up buying one [expensive too] from the place I originally
got the drive.. sigh]...

	Anyhow, the drive actually seems to have flaked out after playing
with it for a few hours over the course of two days, so I'm not sure how 
much of the following is how it should work (or rather, how it DOES work)
for others, and how much is this specific drive going wacky.

	First off, I have a ROM 1 GS with a RamFAST card with 3.00h ROMs and
a 256K cache.. (providing too much detail presumably)

	The drive is a 105 meg Syquest.

	1) I couldn't get Advanced Disk Utilities to deal with the drive.. had 
to do all partitioning/formatting in the RamFAST utilities.. Is that other
people's experience?  If not, any ideas why it didn't work? (ADU would
immediately say something along the lines of "the partitioning couldn't be 
performed" right after I hit the button to perform it..

	2) Even getting the RamFAST to see the existance of the drive 
seemed kind of weird, though this one seems to me to be the drive going flakey
rather than the RamFAST..  When going into the "SCSI Utils" part of the 
RamFAST software, it would often show the drive as being "<<OFFLINE>>" even
though I had a cartridge in the drive from boot...    
	Another weirdness is that it seemed to see the drive (from scsiutils 
again) when I DIDN'T have a cartridge in.. but then it couldn't deal with 
putting a cartridge in then anyways..   (?????  When I got into playing
around with this is when it really started going wacky)

	3) What's the deal with using this thing from P8 anyway...?
Can I or can I not ever switch cartridges and have it work?   I intend on 
using this as a backup medium mostly, but I would sometimes copy stuff to it
from P8 if I can switch cartridges around..   Again, it seems as if the 
RamFAST re-scans the drive when I go into SCSIUtils..  Since it started 
going wacky on me, I'm not positive, but this _might_ be a very annoying
but usable workaround if there is no other workdaround ----- in other words, 
go into the P8 version of the RamFAST utilities and have it rescan the SCSI
bus to switch cartridges.

By the way, what's happening now, whether the drive is connected to the
SCSI bus or not, is when I put a cartridge in, the accessing light goes on
a bit (normal), then it starts going "clunk" every few seconds for a while 
until it gives up...  vaguely like a Disk ][ drive recalibrating with
one "clunk".

Any other people's experiences with Syquest drives and RamFASTs, especially
with respect to the P8 usability, is appreciated..  if any of these other 
weirdnesses are somehow fixable and are my fault, info on those would
be appreciated too.

Sorry for the incoherentness of the above.. I wanted to get this out and get
answers before I end up bringing it in..

even worse non-computer rambling....
[boy, this last ~week has been a royal pain -- car broke down [got new 
alternator but it's not all back on yet as I can't get the belt on by myself],
bought external case that had brackets too wide, thought I paid 3x too much
for my alternator [ended up being that expensive because of an internal
voltage regulator], and a couple more things I can't even remember anymore...
all relatively minor things, but added up to making me the most stressed out
I've ever been... mostly because it all happened when all of my relatives
are out of town....]
finally an end to the rambling....
-- 
unknown@apple.com		Apple II Forever
These opinions are mine, not Apple's.