Re: IIGS-compatible SCSI Drives?

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Xerxes409" <colin_tokyo@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Hi guys,
>
>The SCSI drive in my old IIGS broke, and I need to get a replacement.
>There are a ton of old SCSI drives available for purchase here in
>Japan, but I'm wondering which ones will actually work. I've seen an
>Ultra Wide SCSI, SCSI II, and a 9GB SCSI drive for about 16 bucks at
>the local used computer shop. What should I be looking for, and am I
>going to be limited in HFS partition size?

    I didn't see a mention of which SCSI controller is being used, though it
should be noted your choices are more limited with the RamFAST SCSI.

    In particular, any drives which require arbitration phase support will
NOT work, the Quantum Fireball series is one good example. I recently
tried a Fireball TM 1.28 GB, and to my surprise the RamFAST's built-in
utility actually did detect, partition and format it, however I wasn't able
to boot from it  (there were other strange issues too which popped up).

    There is also an issue with any single devices that are 1 GB or larger
when dealing with the RamFAST (not multiple devices which equal or
exceed 1 GB however) but I can't quite remember what specifically 
would happen. I have formatted 1-2 GB drives and it's been seemingly
operational but I never did much testing beyond copying a few files.

    I still much prefer the RamFAST despite these two limitations, not to
mention it can only mount 12 volumes at a time (beyond that requires
disabling and swapping). I still only have a 240 megabyte hardisk on
mine because I've yet to find a larger drive that isn't mind-numblingly
noisy--most older drives make this high pitched whine spinning the
platter.

Mitchell Spector