Re: Now the fun begins...

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

jmholmes@swbell.net (John) wrote:

>Ok, finally after 3 weeks I finally am up and running with a fully functional 
>//GS running System 6.0.1 with an Apple HD20SC Hard Drive.  
>
>Obviously, this 20 meg hard drive is not going to work for TOO terribly long 
>as the main hard drive on that system (space constraints being the most 
>obvious problem)... 
>
>I've seen several SCSI Hard Drives in the 200-400 meg range on ebay that all 
>say that they have apple ROMS.  I do remember from my Macintosh days that 
>those were the ones to get since you couldn't use the Apple HD Format Utility 
>(or something to that effect) if you didn't have the Apple ROM.  
>
>Does this same limitation apply to the //GS systems or can you just go get any

>old SCSI hard drive and expect it to work correctly (assuming the drive is 
>functional).  I do have a couple of extra external SCSI drive boxes laying 
>around from my old Mac Plus, though the drives in them are dead.
>
>Looking forward to hearing from the experts!

For the IIGS itself, you can use any old SCSI Hard Drive.  The IIGS'
equivalent of the Apple Drive Setup utility for the Mac is the
Advanced Disk Utilities program.  Partitioning for the IIGS is easy
and works on any SCSI drive.  Even Zip and Jazz drives.  HOWEVER,
if you format any partition as an HFS volume, Advanced Disk
Utilities checks for an Apple ROM in the drive.  If it is present, it
installs an Apple Macintosh SCSI driver in an invisible driver
partition on the drive so that any HFS partitions you make will
appear to both the IIGS and the Mac.  This way, you can share
data between IIGS and Macs by using the hard drive as a transfer
device.  If the Apple ROM is NOT present, Advanced Disk Utilities
will inform you that it didn't install the Mac SCSI driver so the
HFS partitions won't be usable on Macs.  HOWEVER, the HFS
partitions remain usable on the IIGS!

BUT, if you DO have a Mac, you DO want to be able to share
data between Macs and IIGS, so what to do?  There is a
freeware program called GenEx that actually extracts the
Apple Mac driver from inside Advanced Disk Utilities and
renames it as a "generic" driver.  Once you put this driver in
the IIGS' drivers folder, Advanced Disk Utilities will install it
into HFS partitions regardless of whether an Apple ROM is
present or not in the drive.

So, the short answer is that no, the limitation does not apply
to the IIGS.  In fact, you can use the IIGS to format HFS
hard drives for the Mac to circumvent the limitations Apple
incorporated into the Mac's own drive setup software.  ;-)