Re: Using 20SC with //GS?

[apple2pd@garp3.icaen.uiowa.edu (ground.ecn AppleII Librarian)]

In article <3a00c384.1102908488@news>,
Marvin Miller <marvinmiller@hotmail.com> wrote:

>peripheral cards. To that end I've come up with my dream machine and
>it looks like this;
>
>Rom 03 //GS (already bought)
>(2) 5.25 drives (already bought)
>(2) 3.5 drives (already bought)
>ZipGS card (already bought)
>6 Meg AE card (already bought)
>
>Now, I plan to add a ramKeeper as well (got a line on one right now
>and have to decide PDQ) and plug the 6 meg AE card into it and another
>identical 6 meg AE card as soon as I find one. This would give a total
>of 12 megs on the card + whatever's in the Rom 03 model. 
>

IMHO, if you have a harddisk, RAM beyond 8Meg isn't worth the hassle.  It
can only be used as ROM.

>AE also made a 2 meg daughtercard for each of the 6 meg cards which
>would bring the total installed memory to 16 megs if I could find
>them. This is, as I understand it, the most you can put in the //GS.
>
>Storage is the next equation. The problems you have noted about
>partitions are new to me and very important. By your information I can
>see that by having both types of floppys active I can only use around
>288 megs of the hard drive. Can I get around this limit by using 3 or
>4 more hard drives using 288 on each?

Since you are using a IIGS and I assume system 6.0.1, use HFS partition(s)
with the large capacity external harddrives.  You need 1 ProDOS partition
for the boot drive, but the rest can be HFS partitions up to 2Gig each
partition.  Performance drops a little when using large HFS drives, so I
would recommend several HFS partitions (100-250 Meg).  2 or 3 ProDOS
partitions, the rest HFS partitions.

>
>I'm going to need to think some more about this storage problem and a
>way to get around it before asking more questions. The CD idea is a
>great idea but the preference was to run 2 big drives and duplex (so
>to speak) the data. 
>
>So I guess the questions I have left (at the moment) are architectural
>and experience related;
>
>[1] Do you see anything wrong with the memory goals mentioned above?

Stop at 8 Meg, total.

>
>[2] Can you run old A2 apps from the GS/OS (similar to a DOS window)?
>If so, than at least I can have the maximum number of partitions
>available to GS/OS?
>

You can run almost all A2 applics, but not in a GS/OS window.  DOS3.3,UCSD
Pascal, ProDOS, or CP/M (w/ Z80 card) replaces GS/OS as the operating
system while the 8bit applics are running.  This is semi-transparent as
you can in many cases launch form GS/OS and return to GS/OS automatically
when the applic quits.  Some will require a reboot however.

>[3] Is Apple's SCSI implementation the same as conventional SCSI? IE:
>8/16 devices, Drive ID's etc

Yes, standard narrow 8bit single-ended SCSI, 8 device IDs per controller
(the controller is usually ID=7).
>
>[4] Have you ever used a Zip drive on one of these puppies? I wonder
>if that might be useful.

Yes, I have used the 100Meg SCSI Zip drive with my GS.  3 prodos
partitions (32+32+3x), 1 ProDOS + 1 HFS, or standard Mac HFS as shipped
from the factory.  My preference is to mount the Zip drive on a Mac and
use appleshare to read/write files over a network.

I am sure the 250Meg SCSI Zip also works, but I don't have one.  If your
harddrive partitions are nearly the same size as you Zip disks, backups
are easier to do on a partition by partition basis.
 
>
>Oh, and a question to all, how do you guys run your storage? Anyone
>out there have around 750 megs of progs? How do you do it?
>

Unix ;-)

  --Steve


-- 

 --Steve  (apple2pd@ground.ecn.uiowa.edu)