Re: Sider Info Wanted

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Brad Weelborg" <mrbrad@ll.net> wrote:

>Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Paul Grammens <grammens@svn.net> wrote:
>>
>> >I just picked up a "Sider" external hard disk at a junk store. It has a
>> >db-37 cable attached, and what looks like a terminator. Is it SCSI? Any
>> >info on what kind of interface card it takes? About all I could find on
>> >the Sider is that it was for the Apple II. This one's a 9710H, has a
>> >Xebec hard disk inside. TIA for any info on this.
>>
>> Hi Paul, that drive uses SASI, the predecessor to SCSI.  The only
>> IIGS SCSI card that's backward compatible with SASI is the
>> RAMFast card.  You'll need to set the RAMFast to NOT provide
>> termination power, otherwise stuff will fry.
>>
>> If you have an SCSI mechanism you can swap with the SASI one,
>> then you should be able to easily turn the drive into a full SCSI
>> model
>
>question on this..once you convert the sider from sasi to scsi... and
>assuming you have a ramfast
>and the ramfast set not to provide term power...
>
>could you still use the Sider Utilities on the formerly sasi hd?
>
>this would be useful in putting in a bigger hd in a couple sider cases i
>have/ w ramfast..in that i could
>use the sider dos 3.3 utils for putting prodos and dos 3.3 on a scsi drive
>
>i assume that i prob would have to leave the sider in sasi format w/ the
>ramfast for the sider utils to be used with it thou..
>
>just a thought what do you all think?

Unfortunately, the Sider utilities would most likely no longer work,
since they are probably keyed to the Sider interface card.

You'll probably need to use the DOS 3.3 Launcher program to
create and run your DOS 3.3 programs off the hard drive as disk
images.

Apparently, I've figured out why DOS 3.3 Launcher's disk images
are a little different from DSKs.  They appear to be ProDOS Order
(PO) images (don't remember, but maybe with a 512 byte header).
Try creating a DOS 3.3 Launcher image and then viewing it with
Copy II+ sector editor using an emulator.  The blocks are all there,
just in a different order.

The neat thing about DOS 3.3 Launcher is that it allows you to
create "multi-side" disk images.  You could have up to 255 DOS
3.3 disks imaged into one mega-file and stored on the hard drive.
Then you would select from them under DOS 3.3.