Re: Help with Zip Drive and the IIgs

[oaaland@aol.com (O Aaland)]

>From: EDavis <LNUSMNF.EDAVIS02@eds.com>
>More clarification:

>I have an Apple SCSI card.  I have the Syquest drive with a SCSI ID of
>"4", and the Zip is using "5".

>I see that the SCSI card has 4 dip switches, and I don't remember
>setting these up when I got the card (circa '90).  I'll look up the owner's 
>manual for the card...Could the dip switches need to be set a specific, 
>DIFFERENT way to have more than one drive attached???

Since you mention dip switches instead of jumpers on the card, if it is
an Apple SCSI card it must be the Apple High-Speed SCSI Card. The four 
switches control the SCSI ID setting and whether DMA is active or not.
Switch is DMA setting. Closed has DMA turned on, open turns DMA off.
Switches 2 through 4 control the card ID setting. Normal setting on these
is to have all three in the closed position whick gives an ID of 7. If you only
had a hard drive attached to this machine you may have had this switch
set lower to delay startup to give the drive time to spin up to ready state.
The GS starts looking at the highest ID number (7) and works it way down 
to the lowest (0) when trying to boot. More than one drive can be attached
regardless of the ID setting on the card. No two devices can have the same
number however. (see related problem below)


>Also, Rubywand mentioned that the disks should come pre-formatted.  My 
>drive is an external SCSI Zip drive.  It has worked fine with my Mac II
>ci that sits next to my MAIN computer, the IIgs.  After fiddling a bit
>trying to get the Zip drive to work with my IIgs, I reconnected it to 
>the Mac, and re-initialized the media on the Mac.  It worked just fine, 
>and I was able to save files on the Mac to it.  I then attached it back
>in a SCSI chain to the IIgs, but could not get either drive to work in 
>a SCSI chain.

If you have booted System 6.0 or 6.0.1 and have the HFS FST active then
the GS will recognize and be able to use Mac formatted Zip disks. Be aware
however that if you format them on the GS the Mac will not be able to use
them because there will not be any useable SCSI driver on the disk for the 
Mac. The solution is to use them ase they come if they are Mac format or 
reformat them on the Mac if they are PC format. If you insert a Mac 
formatted disk in ths GS there will be two partitions that will not be
recognized and you will be asked if you want to initialize or eject. Press 
return to select eject on these partitions. The HFS partition should then 
appear on the desktop.  (If you have PC formatted disks that you want to 
use and will not be using them on the Mac then instead of initializing them
just use Advanced Disk Utilities to partition them. Saves about 10 minutes
a disk.)



>If I have only the Zip drive attached to the Apple SCSI card, turn the 
>termination switch to "on" at the back of the Zip, it is at least 
>recognized by the IIgs.  I can boot from the 3.5" drive, and get asked
>if I want to initialize the disk.  I have said "yes" in the past.  As the 
>Finder comes up, it repeatedly tells me that I already have a disk with 
>the name z1 on the desk top, and I need to rename the disk to a
>suggested z11.  Then a z12, and so on, until my desktop is full of renamed Zip
>volumes.  (This may have been after attempting to run Advanced Disk 
>Utilities, and attempting to partition the volume.) .....

This is the standard response of the GS if you have two SCSI devices online
with the same SCSI ID. If you continue long enough the entire desktop will 
fill up with Icons and then will start placing them on top of existing ones.
the solution is to make sure that no two devices share the same ID.
If you want to start up from you hard drive and have the Zip drive that only
allows two ID choices then you will need to set the card ID to 7, your hard 
drive to 6, and the Zip drive to 5. If the Zip drive has a higher ID than your 
hard drive the GS will hang up looking for a boot disk in the Zip drive.

Owen Aaland