Re: SCSI hard-drive partition questions

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

Dennis Jenkins <dennis@usb.com> wrote:

>       The drive had A single 40.1M partition of type 'APPLE PDOS'.  Note: If
> you create a prodos partition using the standard MacOS software, the
> type is 'Apple_ProDOS'.  The disk was missing the partition table
> partition and the device driver partition.

If the disk has no partition for the partition table, then it doesn't
have any partitions at all - it is a single volume occupying the entire
drive.

This is exactly how Filer (or any other ProDOS utility) would set up the
drive if it didn't already contain a valid partition table, or had no
partitions which the SCSI card recognised as being ProDOS.

I suspect the "APPLE PDOS" indication you are getting is from your Linux
software, which probably analysed the contents of the volume and
recognised the ProDOS file system.  If there is no partition table, then
there is nowhere for the partition type ("Apple_PRODOS" or anything
else) to be stored.

>       Maybe the ROM Ver B on my SCSI card just doesn't do partitions.

Yes, it does (I used revision A with a 60 MB hard drive), but you need
to use the right software to set up partitions.  The SCSIPARTITION
program which is supplied with the card is the only one I know of which
will work with that firmware revision.  It will let you create a maximum
of two ProDOS partitions.

Unfortunately, this won't allow the drive to work on a Mac, because it
won't contain a driver partition.

There are two options:

(a) Upgrade your card to revision C firmware, allowing it to be used
with GS/OS, then use Advanced Disk Utility to partition the drive.  As
it is an Apple-patched drive, it should work with the driver which ADU
will install, allowing the drive to work on both the Mac and Apple II.

(b) Find some Mac-based software which is able to create ProDOS
partitions correctly.  It sounds like there was something wrong with the
partitioning as set up by Apple HD SC Setup.

>       Also, I downloaded GS/OS 5.0.4.  It did not like my SCSI card either.

No version of GS/OS will work with revision B (or A) firmware in the
original Apple SCSI card.  You require revision C, which means doing a
fimrware upgrade on the card.  You will need a 27C128 EPROM (16Kx8), a
copy of the firmware, and access to an EPROM programmer.

In theory, you could use the card with IIgs System 3.2 or earlier, as
these system versions use the ProDOS-16 operating system instead of
GS/OS.  It will be a rather poor substitute for GS/OS, and there is no
way you could access an HFS partition this way.

> It would spontaneously reboot half-way through the boot process.  I can
> not find any version of GS/OS prior to 5.0.4 on the internet.  Can
> someone send me a .SDK file for a version prior so I can try it out?  I
> really want to use the 'finder' to move files around on my HD.  FILER
> just sucks after about 10 file copy/deletes.  

You could always use a better ProDOS-8 utility program, such as Apple's
"Apple II Utilities", Copy II+, Prosel, or even ShrinkIt.

>       I'm considering writing an 8 bit unix like shell for prodos so that I
> can move/rename/delete files using wildcards.  Does such a thing exist
> already?

There are probably several.  For example, the Aztec C compiler includes
a shell which uses Unix-style commands.  I'd have to read the manual to
see whether it supports wildcards (I haven't used it for several years).