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From: unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Removable Hard Drives
Message-ID: <5879@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 19 Nov 89 04:36:11 GMT
References: <7214.infoapple.net@pro-generic> <4578@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Sender: news@lindy.Stanford.EDU (News Service)
Reply-To: unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User)
Organization: UCSC Undergrads
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In article <4578@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> rnf@shumv1.ncsu.edu (Rick Fincher) writes:
>CMS, and AMR have their own SCSI cards that have drivers for online
>mounting and dismounting.  I don't know if there is a problem with this and
>the Apple SCSI card.
>
>I formatted a CMS drive with no problem using an Apple SCSI card and the
>standard GS/OS software (on the CMS you have to change the position of 
>switch 7, I think, for the Apple II.  I got this drive off of a Mac and 
>tested it out.  Some other brands may require a SCSI terminator.
>
>You can get the drive for $799 from Ehman Engineering (See Mac magazines),
>or you can pay $989 for the AMR drive from Roger Coats (1-800-438-2883).
>All of the drive mechanisms are made by Syquest.  The disks cost about $79
>mail order.  If the ability to use these disks like floppies is worth $200
>to you, get a CMS or AMR.

	WAIT A SECOND. STOP THE PRESSES!!!

	At AppleFest, I spoke to an engineer from CMS. I don't believe
he actually created their SCSI card since it's been around for a while, but
he is the one that made their removable hard drive work on the Apple line.
For a while I was really "up" on buying a removable hard drive, but had
recently (soon before AppleFest I mean) found out you couldn't dismount
a cartridge without rebooting. I didn't like this because one of my main
reasons for buying a cartridge hard drive was to use ONE cartridge as
my main storage and ANOTHER cartridge as my backup, thus getting rid of
backing up to floppies..

	Well, the engineer explained it all to me, although I've forgotten
much of it now, so the following simple explanation is probably wrong in
many respects. At AppleFest, the drive could only give back one of four
responses if access is made. Of those four, only an I/O error was appropriate
when a cartridge was taken out (under any circumstances from what I
remember). He showed me what happened under System 5.0. It just opened
a window with 0 items if you took out the cartridge and still tried to open
the device. He said that he was working on a SMARTPORT version of the
cartridge drive which would be much more intelligent and allow on-line
dismounting of cartridges (thus I could do what I want to do!).. He told
me at AppleFest it would probably be ON THE MARKET in somewhere around 6
months.

	Since then I have found out more about this 20 megabyte 3.5" 
SCSI drive that will come out first or second quarter next year. I'm going
to write to them to see if their disks can be dismounted without
rebooting.. If they can I'll probably get one of those drives, as the
drive costs about the same as the CMS one (mail order price for CMS) and
the 20 megabyte disks are only $10 apiece.

	If anyone wants any more info about the drive just mentioned,
mail me.
--
unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu