Re: Hard drive for GS?

[Ed Eastman <noone@nowhere.net>]

Jayson Smith wrote: a total newbie to the concept of hard drives on 
Apple computers.

A hard drive is a big storage media, at least up to 20 times larger than 
your floppy disk and a bunch faster.

Jayson Smith wrote: I use Prodos and DOS 3.3, and not GS/OS.

This will limit which hard drive controller is best for you.  Most 
support four volumes in ProDOS plus more through a GSOS driver.

Jayson Smith wrote: My first question is, is there any way to use a 
modern IDE hard drive on a GS?

Yes, there are numerous options to do so.  Just keep in mind that most 
'modern' hard drives are way too big for ProDOS, you may want a smaller 
drive to prevent wasted space.

Jayson Smith wrote: Is there an IDE interface card?  If so, how much 
does it cost, is it still made or is it an old, long since discontinued 
product?

Yes, there are a half dozen that come to mind immediately.  But you can 
get a new card or an old card. Discontinued or still made, it's your 
choice.  Most controllers and hard drive added separately are between 
$100 and $200 complete.

Jayson Smith wrote: am I correct that the partition limit for Prodos 
volumes is 32 megabytes?

Yes.

Jayson Smith wrote: What about using hard disks under DOS 3.3 with 
something like AmDos?

Dos33 does not support large media such as a hard drive.  AmDOS and 
other DOS 3.3 patches were used for 3.5" drives, not Hard drives to the 
best of my knowledge.  DOS 3.3 does support volumes up to 400 kilobytes 
in size if your programs use the DOS API.  However most programs try to 
access the disk directly and therefore assume too much to work on a 
larger volume, even with AmDOS.

Of course you can get a DOS 3.3 launcher program, it will work with some 
programs so you can launch 'disk images' off of a ProDOS volume.

My recommendation for you:
As far as I know, your best bet would be to get a CFFA card.  It is 
still being made and supports up to 8 ProDOS volumes or partitions. 
Caveat, he is currently out but will make more if enough interest is 
generated.
Link:
http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php

Every slot in the Apple II can support up to two drives, giving you the 
ability to have up to 14 drives or volumes online simultaneously.  The 
smart port protocol reassigns the extra volumes in one slot to other 
slots that do not already have drives assigned.  That is how you can get 
more than 2 volumes online from one card.

The "Compact Flash for Apple" card is a 'standard' IDE controller OR it 
can run a Compact Flash media card instead.  The Compact Flash card is 
basically a writable ROM card and thus makes your hard drive solid state 
instead of having spinning platters with magnetic media inside.  (A 
bunch quieter than a regular hard drive and less heat.)

I understand the there is a SCSI card or two out there that support more 
than eight partitions but you can only see a couple at a time.  This may 
be better for your purposes.

I think the second choice for you would probably be the Microdrive/Turbo 
controller, with it you can make a hard drive on a card or use it to 
control up to two 256M drives.
Link:
http://www.wbwip.com/shh/microdrvturbo.html

Thankx,
Ed