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Re: Smartport Woes!
- Subject: Re: Smartport Woes!
- From: Tim Grams <tgrams@iadfw.net>
- Date: 1996/01/05
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
- Organization: customer of Internet America
- References: <4ch36c$eoh@apollo.is.co.za>
The firmware on Apple II SCSI cards support block mode, not character mode.
Specifically they support direct access block devices, but tape drives are
sequential access devices, at least all the modern ones. The simple
Smarport drivers on the Apple cards only support direct access (disk
drives). Even the old Apple tape drive (3M device) which is a quasi-direct
access device won't work well on the SmartPort level because it uses a
larger block size than ProDOS 8 supports. The firmware guys and the
operating system guys in other words didn't get things to mesh. The
Smartport P8 access is basically useless for tape drives.
Tim - author GSTape