Re: Apple CD 300e Plus

[amotyka <anthony.motyka@googlemail.com>]

On Apr 27, 5:02 am, demp...@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:
> Steven Nelson <steven-nel...@uiowa.edu> wrote:
> > On Apr 24, 9:06 am, "Polymorph" <polymo...@a2central.com.remove-11e5-
> > this> wrote:
> > >   To: Polymorph
>
> > > Polymorph wrote:
> > > > On Apr 22, 7:44 am, dog_...@macgui.com (D Finnigan) wrote:
> > > >> amotyka wrote:
>
> > > >>> I've read on the faqs that Sequential Systems sold a SCSI-2 driver for
> > > >>> the apple card, which I'm hopeful would make everything run smoother.
> > > >>> However I have spent the day trawling the internet for such a driver
> > > >>> with no luck.
> > > >> Try this:http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=12199
>
> > > > Excellent! I asked about this same driver a couple of years ago and
> > > > got nowhere fast. I even mentioned it to Jawaid Bazyar (the author of
> > > > the driver) last year when he was selling all of his Apple IIgs stuff,
> > > > and I never heard anything more. I'll try this out tonight.  :-)
>
> > > OK, I tried the posted driver but I'm pretty sure its meant for the
> > > RAMFast, not the Apple HS SCSI.  :-(
>
> > > You can pretty much guess that from RAMFasts naming convention of
> > > RF.SCSI2. At any rate, it isn't the driver I was after unfortunately
> > > (and it doesn't work with the Apple HS SCSI). But thanks anyhow.
>
> > > If anyone knows where to get the Sequential Systems SCSI-2 driver for
> > > the HS SCSI, please let me know.
>
> > If you have access to old csa2 posts (I use google groups) look for
> > the the thread "Can IIGS use this CD-ROM drive?? - Drivers"
> > from early 1999.  I had no luck trying to buy the drivers from
> > Sequential Systems back then.  (I was ISCA Librarian).  At the time I
> > was pretty sure that David Empson had the scsi2 driver, but I am sure
> > he would have spoken up if he had it, so that was another false lead.
>
> I found a relevant posting of mine from 2002. At the time my
> recollection was that a SCSI-2 driver had been announced but never
> released. It was going to be a media control driver (for controlling
> audio CD playback), nothing to do with data access. I haven't been
> actively involved with the Apple II community since well before then so
> I don't know if that impression was correct or anything changed since.
>
> Apple's early SCSI CD-ROM drives used a proprietary audio command set,
> but switched to the newly defined standard command set somewhere around
> the CD-300e (or it might have been the CD-150). The drivers for the IIgs
> from Apple never caught up.
>
> Data access was well defined as far back as the original CD-SC, so later
> drives which supported SCSI-2 should still work for data access with the
> original IIgs and/or SCSI card firmware drivers.
>
> In GS/OS there is no practical difference between Apple's original and
> high-speed SCSI cards as far as device support is concerned. The card's
> firmware is not involved. All drivers are supplied by GS/OS and access
> the hardware directly.
>
> The only remaining differences are speed (lack of DMA with the original
> card) and termination (high-speed card has termination built in for the
> "near" end of the SCSI bus, but original card doesn't, neither card
> supplies termination power unless modified).
>
> The differences between the original and high-speed cards are more
> signficant for 8-bit software, e.g. the original card (with rev C
> firmware) supports a maximum of 7 volumes (drives or partitions) while
> the high-speed card supports more than 100 via the SmartPort API, and
> the original card's firmware doesn't understand the concept of a
> removable hard drive, so things like Zip drives aren't handled properly
> if ejected and a new disk is inserted with a different partition table.
>
> --
> David Empson
> demp...@actrix.gen.nz

Thanks for the info.
I'm quite happy with my set-up for now as I'm only likely to use HFS-
format disks anyway, which are read fine (now I've installed
patchhfs).
I was able to burn the HFS partition of the Golden Orchard using ultra
iso on my pc, and also the iso of Spectrum Deluxe I bought from
Syndicomm.
I think the high sierra/ISO 9660 format has evolved over the years and
maybe the old GSOS FST has trouble with newer CDs. I believe other
older OSs would have similar issues. I thought I once saw an updated
version of HS.FST but I might be thinking of another platform as I
can't find it now.
The only problem now is changing a CD crashes the system, so I have to
shut down first, but I can live with that.
Anthony