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Using a Syquest Drive on a IIGS

D

Drken

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2009
Messages
306
Location
Charlotte NC
I acquired a Syquest 200 Advantage unit with a number of disks. I installed it on my IIGS with an Apple SCSI II card, but can not access it. It does not appear on the desktop, when I run SCSI utilities it is not there. I swapped out the Apple SCSI card and installed a RAMFast SCSI vers D card, installed the RAMFast SCSI utilities, ran it and the device is appearing as "offline" even though there is a disk in it. I have tried 6 different disks (all used) and to no avail.

I am wondering if anyone here has ever gotten a Syquest to run on the IIGS and, if so, can you help! I feel as if I'm missing something critical, but I haven't a clue. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Ken
www.Apple2Online.com
 
I think your problem is you need a special utility to format those carts. Do you happen to have an old Mac with SCSI laying about? Try formatting the cart using a mac utility. I think older macs can made a prodos partition to boot from and use the rest of the cart for HFS partition for storage (GS/OS 6 can read and write to HFS partitions is you have the driver installed).
 
Going to ask the obvious here:
1. Do we KNOW this drive works? (tested on another machine)
2. Is SCSI ID and Termination all set right?

I have successfully used an Iomega JAZ drive (2gb cartridges) on my IIGS (REV.C SCSI), but getting SCSI ID and Termination all right can be tricky.
 
make sure the last device in the chain is supplying termination power. Apple SCSI cards do not supply termination power, but depends on it for proper operation.
 
Yes & Yes.

I first tried the unit on my Apple SCSI II card (along with 2 hard drives that are typically on the system) and then without the hard drives but with the termination block on the chain. No go. I then replaced the Apple SCSI card with a RAMFast v D card, and again, to no avail. Drive works. Disks are from someone who had a Mac, so they are formatted for the Mac OS. I do not own a Mac, nor know anyone who does.

I am a bit confused by the fact that the Apple IIGS does not see the device & come back with a statement that it needs to be initialized.
 
Older machines that did not come with built in native HD support would not tell you to initialize anything. A IIgs is not a Mac.

Both the Apple SCSI card and RAMFast were sold with utility disks (available online I would think) to do card diagnostics and format SCSI devices. Once the card sees the drives and formats them you will be able to install GS/OS.

For termination do not rely of the HD term settings use an external SCSI terminator at the end of the chain. You should be able to find the SCSI card manuals to see if any internal terminator resisters need to be installed or removed to get the thing to work.
 
Is HFS.FST in your FST folder on your IIgs? You can't read HFS (Mac Disks) on a IIgs without that driver.

-Matt
 
Unknown_K said:
Older machines that did not come with built in native HD support would not tell you to initialize anything. A IIgs is not a Mac.
Click to expand...

It kind of is if he is running latest GSOS and has the HFS driver loaded, it WOULD pop up and ask him to initialize the disk if it didnt recognize it.

That said, if he isnt running GSOS, yeah, he will need some utility, like what comes with the SCSI card to see or format the disk. My Iomega JAZ shows as a hard disk in all the utilities I have, no special JAZ driver required, and the one or two times I worked with a Syquest drive, it was the same way, no driver required, computer just saw it as a fixed disk (thus requiring reboot to change media). Now I know once you load the Syquest or Jaz drivers, you get more features (assuming your platform has drivers, which I doubt the IIGS will) like special formatting tools, the ability to change disks without reboot, etc...
 
I just hooked up an EZ135 to my IIgs on a RAMFast Rev C and no love. Both DOS and Mac formatted carts come up with unrecognized messages but come up fine on a Powerbook with the same drive attached. I'll play with it a few minutes more. I do have the FSTs installed on my IIgs and DOS / Mac floppies come up fine.

EDIT: My carts have 2 small partitions at the beginning of the partition table. Using RAMFast ROM utilities I deactivated (set Active to N) and the Mac partition came up.

-Matt
 
Last edited:
Unknown_K said:
Older machines that did not come with built in native HD support would not tell you to initialize anything. A IIgs is not a Mac.
Click to expand...

In fact, macintoshes of the same vintage wouldn't show you anything either. You wouldn't see anything new (reliably) until you had run "SCSI tools" to probe the bus.
 
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