Hello all,
I have an Apple SCSI Rev C - clone card, and I would like to use it with a solid-state SCSI emulator. I know of a few (such as SCSI2SD and BlueSCSI) but have no direct experience with any of them.
If you have such a setup would you mind sharing your experience setting up the SCSI solid-state drive and using it with ProDOS or other OSs?
Thanks,
Armando
I am using the GGLabs card which is a clone of that Apple card AFAIK.
I have used a BlueSCSI DB25 version with an IIgs with great luck. It was all but plug and play (put an image on the SD card and rename it).
The new product from Inertial / Rabbit hole computing (makers of SCSI2SD) is the ZuluSCSI, which functions much like the BlueSCSI from a user standpoint. I am using a couple of these in 68K Macs, and while it really -should- work with this SCSI card, I've been unable to get GSOS to do so. Interstingly enough though, 8 bit utilities on the IIgs see the ZuluSCSI, but nonetheless I couldn't get the bumps sorted yet. They have great support though and I'm sure it will get fixed at some point.
I have not tested an older SCSI2SD V5 or V6 with the Apple/GGLabs SCSI card, as all of mine are now permanantly installed in happy homes such as a picky Mac Plus, and I don't want to remove one.
tl;dr, try a bluescsi, it's cheap and should work.
I understand your interest in continuing to use your SCSI card, however you might also consider other solid-state hard drive emulation alternatives. One of them I got recently that i like is the Booti from David Mutimer. It uses a USB stick and is very convenient, allows you to throw 32MB ProDOS images on there and has a boot menu where you can select which one you want. You can have up to 8 32MB volumes active at a time and a 32MB USB drive will hold hundreds of drive images. Best of all... it's very inexpensive.
A more expensive option, but still a good one is the MicroDrive Turbo which is sold be ReActive Micro. It is an IDE style setup but it uses a Compact Flash card instead of an IDE hard drive. It's super fast and works well with ProDOS or GSOS.
There are also ways to use the FloppyEmu or wDrive devices as SmartPort drives such as the softSP card (or a Grappler+ card with the EPROM re-burned with the softSP code). Be careful with that on FloppyEmu as it requires a special cable. Ian Kim's SDisk II Plus can also emulate a SmartPort hard drive.
That said... BlueSCSI looks super easy to build. Thanks for getting me to look, it may be something that I might want to think about if I ever want to do anything with the old SparcStations, RS/6000 or HP9000 maachines I have that use SCSI. The SCSI2SD looks interesting, but a bit more expensive.
I haven't used the Booti but it sounds nice. For non-scsi I agree the MicroDrive Turbo is excellent; I use one almost all the time in my Apple II systems. On my IIgs, I boot from one, the SCSI w/BlueSCSI is mainly for sneakernetting.
I have used most of the scsi alternatives extensively; the main difference separating them is SCSI2SD uses the acutal blocks of the SD itself, and you can divide it into multiple areas. Great for permanant installation in a machine, not so great if you need to bridge (copy) stuff on and off if it. On the other hand, BlueSCSI and now ZuluSCSI from the SCSI2SD makers, function very differently. They are intended to be a bit more user friendly, but you leave the SD card formatted and copy disk images directly to the file system. The BlueSCSI uses those files as the drives. I am simplifying here but that's kind of the gist of it, happy to answer any questions if I can. This makes the SD card incredibly useful in emulator use as you can mount the file to the emulator, populate the voulme, and move it back to the real machine. I have used Basilisk II on mac to load up my ProDOS volumes before.
Thanks for all the additional information! I really like the Booti. I actually suggested to David that he look at the USB module that card uses. His card actually does more than I had in mind even. I was mostly just thinking about using it as a sneakernet device for people to use instead of ADTPro but he and Markus made it a full on HD emulator.
Thank you all for your comments. It seems BlueSCSI is the way to go; I will get one.
Thanks
Armando
Hi,
I got me a BlueSCSI which should be here sometime later this week. Now, how do I go about preping the sd card? I understand that I can copy the images to the card and that they must follow a certain convention, like the LUN and sector length.
While there seems to be plently of images for the Mac, I could not find any image for the IIe. I don't mind loading it from scratch either, but I have no experience doing that. Do you have some tips? I have the same card as the one you mentioned, the GGLabs card.
Thanks,
Armando
The SD card itself stays formatted for the PC you use to load it up. I would have to check on mine how I did it but I don't recall having any problems naming a 32mb volume hd1.dsk and being off to the races.
Not a fan of the Booti HD in a IIGS. Save the Booti HD for 8-bit machines.
It's dog-slow compared to a MicroDrive/Turbo and the Microdrive is very little money for what you get - a super fast, super reliable hard drive alternative.
If you want to spend a bit more for more versatility you could use a CFFA-3000 but the best cobination of price and features for me is a MicroDrive/Turbo for hard drive emulation and a Floppy Emu for disk image use.
I am also in the FloppyEMU + MicroDrive camp [for 8 bit machines especially]. I'm hard pressed to find much I cannot run with that hardware on hand.
I even have the CP/M floppies on IIe for the Applicard clone booting off FloppyEMU.
The MDT + FloppyEmu is the way I run my IIgs also. I do love the Booti in a //e though, it works great there. I added a USB extension cable to the Booti and that makes it super convenient to move hard drive images on and off the USB drive. MDT is super fast, but the Compact Flash media isn't the most convenient. I don't have the external drive option for the MDT, that would help. But I still would need to use a card reader on my Linux box which is less convenient than just plugging a USB drive into the front panel. I know, nit picky.
On the //e I have on my desk at the moment I am running a Booti in slot 7 and a wDrive in slot 6.
FloppyEmu is nice on a IIgs because it can emulate either 5.25" or 3.5" drives. I actually have three FloppyEmus and often run two on the same machine at the same time. On the IIgs with BMOW's Daisy Chainer add-on it works great to use two FloppyEmus, one configured as a 3.5 and one as a 5.25 or both as 5.25 for some 8 bit software that expects that.
I may also be weird in that I usuaully use a //e or one of my ][+ or clones instead of the IIgs unless I want to run something that is IIgs specific.
I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; the new Rev C floppy emu has dual 5.25 mode. Incredibly useful; one FloppyEMU, two disk images at once.
Yeah, that works, but using two FloppyEmus has user interface advantages. BMOW's Daisy Chainer and their A/B switches also open up some cool options, mizing and matching real floppy drives and emulators.
Certainly, I occasionally use the daisy chainer myself. It makes very quick work of backing up real disks.
Not weird. I operate that way too. I generally only run GS specific software on my GS and use 8-bit IIe, IIc+ and II+ for 8-bit stuff.
I like real metal.
I have a few images for the APple IIgs and IIe I have been experimenting with. I will upload here over the weekend. I am an authorized BlueSCSI seller and have been playing around with making some images for it including converting the TOTAL REPLAY image. I'll post a message here when I upload them.
Thanks,
Jay