Re: Question(s) on AST RAMSTAK Plus & AE Vulcan Hard Drive

[mojoehand <jgray@zianet.com>]

On Dec 8, 10:24 pm, capknight <cepheusfi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Been digging up some Apple IIGS stuff recently to go through a bunch
> of old disks. I have a few machines, but was looking around eBay and
> came across a cool auction and picked it up.
>
> It is a Woz ROM 3 IIGS w/ a 40mb Vulcan Hard Drive (Western Dig
> inside), a 1.5mb Apple Memory card and a MDIdeas Supersonic Audio
> card. The auction also included an Apple SCSI Card and a AST RAMSTAK
> Plus 1mb card.
>
> The AST looks pretty cool! I was able to track down some 64k 120NS
> EEPROMS on digikey as well as some 256k 120NS chips. The AST
> documentation (it actually came with the box, manual, disk and card..
> wow..) doesn't list 64 Kb or 256 Kb as an EEPROM option. The
> documentation lists 2Kb - 32Kb per socket for the EEPROM and 8 Kb - 64
> Kb for the EPROM. It also lists 200 ns for both.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has tried using larger or faster EEPROMs with
> the card (or if anyone has used the card at all). Looks pretty cool to
> have GS/OS in ROM.
>
> The second question is about the Vulcan Hard Drive. I've determined
> that it is not the "Gold" version of the Vulcan (although I did order
> a Gold ROM upgrade from ReactiveMicro along with a IIGS Microdrive
> Turbo controller - whoops!). The 40 megabyte drive that came with the
> unit works only if I plug it into another power source instead of
> using the Vulcan supply. I think the Vulcan output is only really
> capable of handling the IIGS right now. Definitely needs an overhaul.
>
> The auction actually came with the AE Vulcan manual as well. The
> manual lists a 20, 40 and 100 megabyte option for the Vulcan so I
> thought I would try some other drives. So far I tried a 105 megabyte
> Seagate and two different 120 megabyte Quantum drives. The IIGS boots
> and the software recognizes that there is a drive available. However,
> when it determines it can't see a partition and asks me if I want to
> make one, it then says that the drive is unrecognized and tosses me
> back into ProDOS.
>
> Was the Vulcan gold card that different from this version? Has anyone
> ever tried updating the Vulcan hard drive table to include different
> drive info?
>
> As for the power supplies, I don't suppose anyone has a list (or if
> it's available somewhere) of all the caps in the IIGS power supply? I
> had one start on fire in another machine and I was thinking it was the
> caps had dried up.
>
> We did order a LittlePower IIGS from ReactiveMicro, but I wanted to
> pre-empt any more fires in a few of the other supplies.
>
> Lots of fun!
>
> Thanks for any help!
>
> C

I also have a Vulcan. The power supply is dead and I haven't fixed it
yet. Sadly, the 20MB drive is also no good. I have tried several other
drives and so far, none of them work. As others have pointed out, the
Vulcan is very particular about what drives it supports. I wouldn't
mind patching the drive table in my Vulcan card if I just knew where
to find it in the ROM.

Here is a list of drives that are supposed to work with the Vulcan
card. I don't remember where I got this information at the moment.

Seagate:
ST-125A

Western Digital:
WD93044-A
WD93048-A
WD93048-AD

Conner Peripherals:
CP-341
CP-342

Miniscribe:
MS8051A

Actually, If I can't find a drive that works, I may get rid of the
Vulcan. If you are interested in spare parts, email me.

As for the EPROMs on the AST card, I assume you mean 32KB (as in 2732)
instead of 32Kb? As for using faster parts, that should be no problem,

BTW, I don't think that a Woz GS came with a ROM 3. It was the first
50 thousand (or so) machines, so they would have all been ROM 0 or ROM
1. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.