Re: Using 20SC with //GS?

[Wayne Stewart <waynes@intergate.bc.ca>]

Marvin Miller wrote:

> Oh -Oh,
>
> What sounded simple is now getting complex! Perhaps I should give you
> the complete scenario as it looks like there might be issues
> looming....
>
> I need a SCSI controller for my ROM 03 //gs.
> I have two Quantum Fireball TM's (2.1gig) that are NT formatted that I
> want to install into two cases (there seems to be no issue with the
> cases, but maybe with the drives?)

The Quantum Fireball is definitely an issue with a ramfast. I believe it
might be alright with an Apple HS SCSI card though. I believe I tried
a 1.2gb Quantum Fireball with the HS-SCSI card a few years ago.

> In this //gs will be a 6 meg AE memory card and a ZipGS initally
> running at 7Mhz and soon to pushed to at least 10Mhz.

There's a good chance you can get to 10mhz by just changing the
oscillator. I upgraded mine when they were still available. I'd be a
lot more leary about sticking a soldering iron to it if I had to do it now.

> Question:
> What SCSI card is _known_ to work in this type of configuration?
> What revision level?

The Apple HS SCSI card should likely work there.
There's only one version of it.

> Given (2) 2.1 gig drives, will I be able to 'see' all that space under
> ProDos?

Not unless you partition it into about 65 partitions. I don't know if
that'd even be feasible. ProDOS has a maximum partition size of 32mb.
You need a ProDOS partition to boot a IIgs off of and any 8 bit software
has to be run from a ProDOS partition so most people with drives over
150mb or so generally use from 2 to 6 ProDOS partitions and the
remainder as HFS. Also 8 bit software also generally require that the
partition it's on be mapped to a slot which limits the number of partitions
you can haveif they're being used for 8 bity software.


>
> Reason: I have approx 750megs of Apple progs that I want to archive
> onto those disks. I want to run all the old A2 apps/games and the
> newer //gs stuff and 'mirror' the data from one drive to the other for
> acrhival purposes so that I will never loose these old progs.

That'd be likely oh-1 to 2000 3.5" floppies given that most floppies
weren't full. If you eliminate the system software and so forth that
likely brings it down to half that size or less.
Why not buy a used 200 to 400mb HD for 10 or 12 dollars and see
how it goes. Starting from scratch it's goig to be a heck of a long
time before you run out of room.
Hard drives are usually a poor way to archive stuff. They all die
eventually or get corrupted.  Maybe I'm prejudiced because at one
time years ago I used 2 HDs as backup. About every 2 or 3 weeks
I'd copy the contents of my main HD over to one of the two backups,
one of which I stored at a fiends place. As it happens I didn't use some
important files for a couple of months and somehow those files got
corrupted and I didn't use them long enogh to copy them to both backups.
Took me 2 weeks to replicate those files. Now all my backups are CDs.
I perform that service for a couple of friends that don't have CD burners
as of yet.


    Wayne