Re: :( 12 Partition Limit!?!?!??? :(

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <4rhp72$s2h@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>,
John Bowling <johnlb@Primenet.Com> wrote:
> 
> There are some route around the problem.  If you have two HD interface
> boards, you can use both.  They should be different boards.  2 RamFast
> or 2 Apple boards will both try to use the same addresses.

That would be a neat trick, considering that each slot has its own
unique address range (unless the card bypasses the normal address
decoding).

You can certainly install multiple original Apple SCSI cards in one
machine.  You _might_ have trouble with DMA handling with multiple
Apple High-Speed SCSI cards, but I very much doubt it.

The GS/OS device driver reference says that SCSI.Manager will work
with multiple Apple SCSI cards.

It is possible that you may have trouble installing multiple RamFast's
into the same machine, but I can't say anything either way as I've
never used the RamFast, and don't know enough about its CPU
interfacing architecture.

> Part of the problem is with the OS.  Any P8 program, such as ProTerm,
> cannot find the top 4 drives and no HFS drives.  I think the limit is 8
> with P8.  And I suspect that GS/OS itself has a limit somewhere.

GS/OS does have a limit: each driver is not able to support more than
63 (possibly 64) volumes.  This means you cannot have more than 63
SCSI partitions (over all device types) with a RamFast card, and
cannot have more than 63 hard drive partitions (plus 63 CD-ROM
partitions) with one or more Apple cards.

> The reason large drives are not recommended is that there is limited space
> for the bit map.

[Neil Parker gave a correct description of this.]


-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand