Hi guys. My beloved Apple IIgs is getting a much needed color monitor soon, which means it might be seeing quite heavy use. Floppys are all good fun, but tedious and slow. Plus, I want a full install of GS/OS with all my apps ready in a couple minutes when I turn on my IIgs.
Problem is, I have 2 external hard drives for my IIgs, one of them is dead, the other working. I have the cables, terminators, and even software for them, but no card.
I was wondering which should I invest in: an Apple II SCSI card of some variant, or a CFFA? Rich is working on a new batch of CFFA cards, this time with a whole host of new features, like floppy drive emulation, USB flash drive support, and DMA. I messaged him on interest in one, and he said unlike the previous boards, this one will be more than $100.
So, which one of these seems to be the better deal? I really don't want to see the hard drives go to waste, but I feel as old as they are they won't last very long under heavy usage.
Oh, and there is also the forthcoming blueflash project, which allows use of bluetooth to transfer disk images to the apple. But I have not heard anything on that in about a year, since the website went up.
-digital 
Minutes? Bah. Under one minute for sure!
The other will fail soon enough. Such is the fate of all spinning platters.
Do you need the data that's currently on the working SCSI drive? If not, go solid state. Spinning platters will go the way of the dodo bird.
I'd pick CFFA if it were me.
A high percentage of my old SCSI drives in my 'pile' are no longer working reliably, and you can't buy new ones. I'm lucky enough that I've now got very few scsi-based computers, and a lot of scsi drives, so I can get by. If you've only got two drives, you might prefer going to CF and only using the hard drives when you feel the need to go completely old-school.
Tough call. If you are not going to want to use a CDrom or 100meg zip drive on the IIgs with a HD, the CFFA might be a better choice. USB? That sounds almost as good as the one with the Bluetooth that has been quiet. The CFFA takes up less space. It also suppose to play nice with the RamFast. At least the older ones. You can always add SCSI later to it.
Silicone Alley has not had any Apple items in a while. 10mile and Ryan. The URL for it.
http://www.siliconalleyrecyclers.us/index.html
The Hamfest will be starting up, but each time they are smaller and smaller. Most of the Apple II items have already passed thru the system. URL for the all Hamfests
http://www.arrl.org/hamfests.html
Have you seen any school garage sales or auctions that I might missed? Any good resale shops in your area. I am more of an eastsider, so anything on the west side or down river I know nothing about.
Take Care
I have no idea what is on the other drive. I was just handed the drives with the IIgs. Of note, though: it's a QDrive. The other is some other brand. Both are around 100mb.
I know, all spinning platters will eventually die, but my HD20 (non SCSI) is still going strong.
The only CD-ROM I have that would work on it is a CD150, the cartridge type, and I don't see myself using it much. I have a couple SCSI zips, but don't use them much, just for transferring data between older macs.
It looks like the CFFA is the better buy, especially with the floppy emulation, and USB drive support. I could just hook in a flash drive and back everything up. With that floppy drive emu, I might not even need to use my floppy drives, though I will still have them hooked up. ADTPro to the rescue for transferring my disks!!
Now all I need to do is wait for CFFA3000 to come out.
-digital
I even have a CFFA adapter in my 5300cs Laptop. An 8 Gig. It runs fine.
I have several of rich's cards here that I use all the time. I'm waiting for the new ones too.