Re: Hard Drive Questions

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

In article <3ciob6$9jp@panix2.panix.com>,
Mark Mentovai <moxie@panix.com> wrote:
> I think I'm going to treat myself to a hard drive for Christmas, but I'm 
> unsure of a few minor points:
> 
> - I remember reading somewhere that ProDOS can only access two 
> partitions.  Is this correct?

No.  ProDOS-8 1.9 and earlier can only access two partitions, unless the
SCSI card is in slot 5, in which case it can access four partitions.
With a RAMFast card, this limitation is removed anyway.

ProDOS-8 2.0 and later can access up to 14 volumes in total, and
SmartPort partitions will be remapped to unused slot/drive numbers.
Two can be supported directly on the slot containing the card.  To
determine how many extra partitions you can have, count how many slots
you have that contain no disk interface cards of any kind (e.g. serial
cards and parallel cards don't count) and multiply this by two.  The
auxiliary memory RAM disk also counts, so subtract one for this.

> - I also remember that ProDOS places a limit on the maximum size of each 
> partition.  How large does it accept?

32 megabytes per partition (65535 blocks, which is 32767.5 kilobytes).

> - What software will I need to format and partition the drive?  It must 
> be compatible with an Apple //e (enhanced), since that's all I have.

It depends on which SCSI card you get.  The Apple SCSI cards should
include partitioning software, which is pretty rudimentary.  The
version supplied with the original card only supports two partitions.
The version supplied with the high-speed card supports two or four
partitions.  There are third-party programs which are more flexible,
but I don't think they are available any more.

If you have access to a Macintosh or IIgs, the drive could be
partitioned on either of these, then used on the IIe.

The RamFAST card includes partitioning software in its ROMdisk, I
believe, which should be able to handle anything.

> - What is the best deal on a SCSI card for the //e?

Probably a second hand Apple card.  The RAMFast card is considerably
faster, but also more expensive.  The original Apple SCSI card is the
slowest one, but should also be cheapest.

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