Re: Hard Drive Help needed!

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

In article <2pc4rk$f5i@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>,
Auri Rahimzadeh <ek361@cleveland.Freenet.Edu> wrote:
> 
> Buy a RAMFast SCSI.  Apple High Speed SCSIs are slow, and are
> not made/supported anymore.

You can still buy them (e.g. from Quality Computers), and Apple will
still be supporting them if they release any further versions of the
System Software (with updating SCSI drivers).

If you think the HS SCSI card is slow, you should try the original
Apple SCSI card.  Now _that_ was slow.  The HS SCSI card was a major
improvement (the RamFast is faster still).

> Plus, the RAMFast supports the newer SCSI-2 protocol drives, making
> it compatible with all of the SCSI drives today!

So does the HS SCSI card, if you're talking about hard drives (I have
a brand new Quantum 240 MB drive, which is SCSI-2 based, and it works
fine with my HS SCSI card).  All SCSI-2 drives are supposed to be
SCSI-1 compatible.

The only place where SCSI-2 compatibility is an issue is with CD-ROM
drives.  The Apple card's SCSI drivers and firmware do not support
SCSI-2 CD-ROM audio commands, but that could be fixed by supplying
a new driver.  An example of this is Apple's CD-300, which uses SCSI-2
audio commands (earlier models use Apple's proprietary audio commands,
which are supported by the HS SCSI card).

In theory, a HS SCSI card can support _any_ SCSI device - all you need
is an appropriate driver, and you can usually get these from a third
party (e.g. Tulin makes a Floptical driver for the card).

> Plus the RAMFast is supppppppppeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr FAST!!!

Actually, it isn't much faster in GS/OS.  No question in ProDOS-8,
though.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand