Re: SCSI hard-drive partition questions

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

Dennis Jenkins <dennis@uranium.usb.com> wrote:

> David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
> 
> > Unfortunately, [using ProDOS-8 partitioning software] won't allow the drive
> > to work on a Mac, because it won't contain a driver partition.
> 
> Argh!  However, you said that I can have a max of 2 ProDOS partitions, but
> does the Apple II SCSI card care about other partitions, such as the 
> MacOS Driver partition, or an A/UX root, usr, swap, spare?

The SCSI card firmware probably ignores everything other than ProDOS
partitions.

GS/OS is a little more complicated, since it supports multiple file
systems.  It looks for specific partition types which it ignores, but
will try to mount anything it doesn't know about.  Unfortunately, this
includes recent Macintosh driver partitions ("Apple_Driver43", which are
drivers that support Macintosh SCSI Manager 4.3).

I know that it correctly ignores free space partitions and older Mac
driver partitions.  I'm not sure what it would do with an A/UX
partition, but it is likely that it would be ignored, since there was no
FST to support the file system.

> > 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.
> 
> Where can I get ProDOS-16 system 3.2?  I just want to play with it.

I'm not aware of any official source - Apple didn't provide general FTP
access to the IIgs system software until 5.0.4.  Earlier versions were
only distributed on floppy (or CD for developers).  Someone may have
posted an illegal copy somewhere.

In any case, Advanced Disk Utility didn't exist until System 5.0, so you
wouldn't have any partitioning software if you were running System 3.2.

Footnote: it is "Apple IIgs System 3.2", not "ProDOS-16 System 3.2".
The OS version number is not directly related to the system release
number.  System 3.2 included ProDOS-16 version 1.6.  System 4.0 (the
first release of GS/OS) included GS/OS version 2.0.  System 6.0.1
contains GS/OS version 4.0.3 (ish).