Hi all,

I acquired a few month ago an Apple 2GS as I was a big fan of my Apple 2e back in the past...

I wanted to be able to have an << internal >> storage with as much as possible space on it which could you used by GS-OS and maybe PRODOS.

Note I already own a Floppy Emu, but I find quite slow and mostly I cannot use it when my 5.25 apple drive is connected.

So, I ordered a Cirtech SCSI card, I received a few days ago, and was trying to use it with a ZuluSCSI Micr-SD card reader.

After several attempts, I managed to have it working but some real limitations :

• Right now, I only manage to have two disks available in GS-OS. Whenever I try to have more than 2, the one with the 0 id, which contains the system and is supposed to be mounted first, is either not mounted or mounted after some others, which leads to a non bootable situation,
• I'm not able to manage << big >> partitions as I want. Whenever I create an empty visual drive which is more than 32Mo, the disk utility let me format it but won't let me create partitions on it (button is disabled). Than means that even if I solve my number 1 problem, I will be limited to 7 partitions of 32 Mb.

Any comments, advices, tutorials would be welcomed...

My configuration :

• Apple 2Gs REV1 with 4mo of RAM,
• Cirtech card inserted in slot 7, set as << My Card >> in GS configuration panel, used in Safe mode (documentation isn't very clear to if it could work in Fast mode),
• GS OS 6.04,

Thanks (and sorry for my English)....

I believe (others can correct me) that ProDOS has a hard limit of 32mb per Volume. This may seem crappy by todays standards, or even those of the 90s, but when the first hard disks came out, 5mb and 10mb drives were rocking it. So, I think with your SCSI card, you will be "limited" to only 7 devices with 32MB on each. But if you consider most games take less than 140kb, thats a LOT of software you can fit on those devices.
Beyond this, you COULD get another SCSI card and then mount another 7 drives. Or, maybe a better/cheaper solution is to get a Booti and use that to provide more drives.

As for booting, I have an Apple Fast SCSI card, and it wants its first device to be 6, its possible this was a more general default. So try making a boot drive with ID6 and see if that boots.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I will try the ID6 trick, and will let you know.

My understanding is that PRODOS partitions can not exceed 32MB, but disk drives can be bigger (I managed to see a 200 Mb disk before formatting it, but it won't let me create several partitions on it... so when I format it I only get a 32Mb partition), for a reason I don't really understand.

Best regards...

The big Applied Ingenuity drive in my IIgs is also on slot 6.

Jumper to fast mode (basically this sets the card to appear as a SmartPort device) and place it in Slot 5 if you want to use more then 2 ProDOS partitions on a drive.

These early cards are very weird about partitions as they tend to be written "raw" without any partition table on the drive. The software included can partition a drive, just don't expect these images to work properly with imaging software, although CiderPress II might be able to handle them. Set the ZuluSCSI to emulate one hard drive at SCSI ID 6 roughly 64MB in size to start. This card appears to only support two "physical" drives connected to it. Its not a full blown SCSI interface like the Apple cards.

The only Apple II SCSI cards that do things the "Apple way" of using the Apple Partition Map is Apple's cards and the RamFAST SCSI card.

Thanks, I'll have a try during the weekend...

Hi,

Just tried what you advised.

First of all, it seems that SCSI card choose to mount as a first volume the bigger SCSI ID (I thought it was the opposite).

I've tried to set the card in slot 5, setting it as "Your card" in the configuration panel, and in fast Mode. Fast Mode still doesn't work (in fast GS-OS boots but it remains stuck on the loading screen). In safe mode it does start but still loads only two partitions...

Any other idea ? Something I've missed ?

Thank you

Did some extra tests, but still not more that two disks visible... I'm quite confused. Documentation says that It should be plugged in slot 5, which Ì did but not more than two disks still, and no way to create partitions on a bigger disk...

Any other idea ?

Fraid not, I think each card may be a little specific, I know the Apple SCSI and Apple Fast SCSI cards use ID 6 as their bootable ID, I guess this is following the kind of Apple II Slot precedent, with booting going from highest slot to lowest. I believe that in normal SCSI practive, its ID0 upwards.
When I get around to setting up my Apple Fast SCSI on my IIgs, Ill see how many partitions I can make per drive etc...

Thank you. For now I didn't manage to have several partitions per disk. As I can only mount two disks / partitions for now, this is very frustrating as I can only have 64Mo with those two 32MB disks / partitions...

Thank you

I think it's commendable that you were able to get it to work with the ZuluSCSI card at all.

I have a Cirtech card and it's not the greatest card. I never tried it with SCSI emulators very much but I did try a number hard drives before I found one that worked. I never tried more as I just wanted a working drive. I was attempting to have one of every Apple II SCSI card made though I doubt that I'll ever find the rarest card.

I picked up a Cirtech card last week and I've been fighting to get my DB25 External BlueSCSI to work with it. The card is definitely accessing the BlueSCSI but I haven't been able to do anything to drive images on the SD card. With the support disk it came with it only ever throws mode sense and capacity read errors when trying to test or format a drive and an I/O error when trying to partition. I do know the card works because it can interface with external physical SCSI drives fine.

>> chasnah said:

I picked up a Cirtech card last week and I've been fighting to get my DB25 External BlueSCSI to work with it. The card is definitely accessing the BlueSCSI but I haven't been able to do anything to drive images on the SD card. With the support disk it came with it only ever throws mode sense and capacity read errors when trying to test or format a drive and an I/O error when trying to partition. I do know the card works because it can interface with external physical SCSI drives fine. Click to expand...

I figured out that my DB25 BlueSCSI is just straight up broken in a way that it would work on my Mac SE/30 and newer machines but won't work on my Mac Plus or the Cirtech card. After redoing the ugly solder work I had originally done on it now I can barely even get it to work right on the newer machines too.