Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pro-graphics.UUCP!bobl
From: bobl@pro-graphics.UUCP (Bob Lindabury)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: SCSI Cards
Message-ID: <8906141118.AA26913@crash.cts.com>
Date: 14 Jun 89 00:47:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: pnet01!pro-sol!pro-simasd!pro-generic!pro-graphics!bobl@nosc.mil
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38

Network Comment: to #15 by pnet01!crash!pro-pac.cts.com!tomj

Tom Jenkins asks about CMS SCSI cards.  I have owned 3 of them for a couple of
years now and have gone through 1 upgrade of the ROM on the cards.  There have
been no updates of the CMS SCSI card since June 1988 that I know of.  In fact,
CMS has discontinued manufacturing the cards from what I've been told.

I have never experienced the hanging after a minute of operation.  The only
time I did experience any type of hang was when I had 2 Apples w/CMS cards
plugged into the same drive and had one Apple turned off.  There seems to be
some sort of termination problem when you do that.  I now always run both
computers when they are attached to a single drive.  In fact, I now run a CMS
SD43 that is connected to my Apple //gs via the CMS SCSI card.  I also run a
homemade 64 meg hard drive (MacCrate case with Seagate ST277N drive inside)
off of the //gs and the //e at the same time via 2 more CMS cards.  All I need
is a 4th card and I can run both hard drives off of both computers.  

I have found that you should only boot from one machine and boot the other
machine from a floppy and THEN access the hard drive from there.  This saves
any hangs and any other problems related to trying to boot 2 computers at the
same time off the same hard drive.  Anyway, the GS boots into GSOS and the //e
into Prodos 8 so I don't want to boot them from the same drive anyway.

As for the question about the Apple SCSI card working with a CMS drive (or any
other Vanilla hard drive), yes, the Apple SCSI card will run the drives.  I
have a few friends that have been testing them and have found they work just
fine.  There seems to be some info missing from the Apple SCSI manual about
use with non-Apple hard drives.  I can get the info if you are interested.

Also, one point to remember, the Apple SCSI drive requires that you have the
drive powered up for 30 seconds before you turn on your computer.  I find this
requirement unacceptable since I run a turnkey ProLine BBS system.  If the
power goes out, I need my system to be able to re-boot itself without any
problems.  With the CMS cards, it does this without a problem.  With the Apple
card, it would be hung until someone came home to fix it.

All in all, I will stick with the CMS cards until Apple makes some sort of
delay in there card for turnkey startups.