Re: Profile HD- What is necessary to make it work w/ the II's

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:

:>Profiles are useful on ancient boxes which can't use anything else. HS SCSI
:>cards aren't overly plentiful any more either so I wouldn't consider using one
:>in a III. So that's a non issue in addition to being a goofy idea to convert
:>an Apple III's Profile to SCSI then have to put a SCSI card in the III to use
:>the drive if you ask me.

: Since you already have Profile cards, of course it seems silly to you.
: However, Profile cards are a hell of a lot more rare than High Speed
: SCSI cards.

Apple III Profile cards aren't nearly as rare as the Apple II kind. I'd say
you have about even odds of getting one in any Apple III you run across.
It would be a waste of a HS SCSI to use it in a III I think, since people
have these mainly for gee whiz value these days. 

:>As someone else pointed out, regular ol' SCSI enclosures are cheap and
:>plentiful so there's no need to ruin a not-so-plentiful Profile to make one.

: The low level formatting on the Profile mechs do not last forever.
: You can't low level format without special hardware setup.  For
: what it is worth FOR AN APPLE II USER, it seems better to
: convert.

I have a Profile analog board with the piggyback chip on it, along with
my IIIs. I bet these are in a good deal of Profiles out there. I just need
the software for the III and I can do low level formats. The board came from
a Profile which Steve B converted over. He also set me up with an Apple II
Profile card.

: If you own some Lisas, that's a different story.

Bingo. I have a non functional Lisa 2 whose internal hard disk is broken.
Fixing it has been on the back burner for a long time since parts for those
relics are hard to come by. Plus I have a functioning XL with working internal
hard disk.

:>: I wouldn't call it "gutting" a Profile.  More like a transplant.  ;-)
:>
:>I'll keep mine as is.

: Well, sure, but if I had some non-functioning Profiles in my
: attic, I'd rather put them to use via conversion.  They are
: not going to be of any use for Lisa units anymore, right?

See above. I have plenty of uses for Profiles which work as is.

Here's a question: as one of the more militant Apple II users here, suppose
some Mac type told you that the only use for Apple IIs was to gut them and
use the cases as hard disk enclosures. Even more so, suppose this person
said that his favorite kind was original ][s, which of course aren't all
that plentiful. How would that grab ya? Same logic applies, an original ][
would only be useful to a Mac type as a hard disk enclosure, but it's worth
much more than that to an Apple II fan. The guy could sell the ][ and take
the $ and get a real nice enclosure.

I like it myself about as much as I liked hearing about all the original Macs
which got turned into fish tanks when I was looking for a case to replace the
one which got busted up in shipping when I got my original Mac. That made it 
a little hard to find one but luckily I did turn one up in great shape. My 
opinion is there are too many fish tanks and hard disk enclosures out there 
to use old hard to find Apple stuff for those purposes.
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