Apple IIGS SCSI Help

[TanruNomad]

I recently acquired a Sandwich II SCSI card and SCSI drive for my Apple IIGS. Never used SCSI (use CF solutions for my hard drive needs mostly), but was hoping someone could help me setup this thing up. It's a 40MB SCSI drive by "iDS PRO" and has 4 plug-ins on the back (see picture). It came with 2 cords, one connects the drive to the card, the other connects and 3.5 floppy drive to one of the two circular ports on the right. No terminator was included as far as I know.

 

[RetroHacker_]

That floppy port cable probably only supplies power to the drive. The case itself is a bit odd - most standard SCSI cases have built in power supplies and just have the normal IEC socket on the back. The disk inside the case will be an industy standard SCSI drive. There is nothing special about this particular drive/case, you can use any SCSI hard drive with the II.

You will definitely want a terminator.

What questions do you have about setting this up? Just install the card in the II (probably slot 7), set the slot to "Your Card" in the control panel, and plug the drive into the card. Plug a SCSI terminator into the unused port on the drive - or daisy chain other drives off it, just make sure the last drive in the chain is terminated.

It may or may not have a bootable file system on it, in which case, boot from the GS/OS installation floppies and partition/format the drive. The largest partition you can use for a ProDOS filesystem is 32mb, so you need to make two partitions.

-Ian

 

[aoresteen]

Most 50 pin SCSI devices have a terminator built in that can be terminated via a jumper and do not need an external terminator. You will have to open the case and check the drive specs to see if it does.

Having said that, I NEVER internally terminate a SCSI device. Makes it very hard to add more devices to the SCSI chain.

My concern with your drive is the power supply. Where does it get it's power?

 

[TanruNomad]

Thanks for following up, I should have posted an update earlier. RetroHacker was right in thinking the floppy disk drive provides power to the scsi drive. I had never heard of that before so it threw me. Once I bought the external terminator, the scsi started up just fine. I transferred over the drivers from the scsi to my original CF hard drive and now I have additional 40mb in total HD space. Can't complain there. I posted a vid on youtube about the drive. Little did I know it contained one of the larger vintage porn collections I've seen. :razz:

Video: http://youtu.be/JEXuSpPljbw