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Re: Vulcan Gold firmware?
On Jul 26, 2:38 pm, schmidtd <schmi...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> On Jul 26, 1:27 pm, Steven Hirsch <snhir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Steven Hirsch wrote:
> > > Wayne Stewart wrote:
> > >> On Jul 26, 9:45 am, Steven Hirsch <snhir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>> Just curious: Did anyone ever find an image of the Vulcan Gold
> > >>> firmware? I
> > >>> just purchased a Vulcan with dead power supply and drive and am
> > >>> working on a
> > >>> resurrection. There are a few Conner drives available at reasonable
> > >>> prices
> > >>> that are reported compatible with the Gold firmware, so I'd like to
> > >>> get ahold
> > >>> of it.
>
> > >>> Steve
>
> > >> The vulcan gold 2.0 ROM has been available since about 2002. You need
> > >> Partition manager 2.0 to use with it
>
> > > I'm possibly a bit confused, then. There was a thread on this group
> > > within the last few weeks that suggested folks were still looking for it.
>
> > > Where can I grab the firmware image? Google (which I never seem to have
> > > much luck with) finds nothing. Ditto for Partition Manager.
>
> > Ack, just read more closely and now understand that Vulcan 2.0 == Vulcan gold.
> > So I _do_ have it. One problem down.
>
> > Still not clear on Partition Manager, though. Is this an AE utility or
> > something from Apple?
>
> There's a disk image on Asimov from AE that seems to have a partition
> manager on it, in name, anyway. I don't have a card, so all I can get
> out of the utilities is that it can't find itself.
>
> Look for:ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/hardware/storage/vulca...
Hello,
Welcome to our Vulcan IIe ROM hunt! Haha.. The thread you mentioned
was from myself looking for a Vulcan IIe ROM. The Vulcan GOLD and
Vulcan 2.0 are the same ROM. The IIe ROM is different and we believe
ended in version 1.4.
If your card is a Vulcan IIgs and not the GOLD/2.0 ROM, it should have
something listed along the lines of;
1.2 VUL GS/40 (substitute the 20 for 40 or 105 depending on drive
size)
1.4 VUL/GS/20
If you have a different ROM number or even a "IIe" listed on it, PUH-
LEASE let us know!
Henry at Reactive Micro (www.reactivemicro) has the ROM on his site
for download and he also sells it for $10 if you don't have a burner
to make one yourself.
I actually have three Vulcan GS setups. One came with a Western
Digital 43megabyte drive (on it's last legs) and the two others came
dead with the Seagate ST-125-A - 20 megabyte drives. However! Do note
that a lot of these drives might not be dead. Just "frozen" from the
gunk on the inside from sitting so long. Both Seagate drives were
brought back to life by carefully taking off the bottom circuit board
and giving the spindle a gentle push. Each one was frozen. After I
"unfroze" them, they both came back to life. One of them is a bit
damaged and requires a format.
Your power supply is also probably suffering from old capacitors so
you might use another supply, say from an external hard drive case, to
power the drive up first and then fire up the IIgs to see if you can
get access.
I re-capped two of the three Vulcan GS supplies and just finished re-
painting them and putting new cooling fans inside. They came out
great!
Here is the fan DigiKey part number: P13494-ND
Had an accident re-capping one of the supplies (ooops) so I am re-
tooling it to use a LittlePower GS (http://www.reactivemicro.com/
product_info.php?cPath=1_27&products_id=49) inside of it with a 105mb
Connor drive.
If you are looking for the 105mb drives, I found them here; (http://
www.4drives.biz/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=252). Working
great for me.
Note that one of my Vulcan GS cards went bad. At first I thought it
was because I tossed it into a IIe when I first got it not realizing
the ROM difference. Turns out the capacitor on the board was bad. Make
sure to have a look at the caps on your Vulcan GS board too.
If you bump into any IIe ROMs for the Vulcan, please let us know!
As for the software, there is a program that runs in either GS/OS or
ProDOS that is called "Vulcan IIGS Utilities" that will let you
partition and format the drive up. I have an old version which is why
I think it belches on the GOLD ROM. Found a few files on Asimov for
the Vulcan but haven't had any time to get to them yet.
Maybe this weekend.
Good luck with your project!
Best,
ATF