bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) (09/17/85)
We have been taking a lot of calls at Fastime about the MacSCSI board -- most of the questions are the same -- to help other readers of the net who are interested (and to save many more telephone calls!) here is the info: 1) The MacSCSI board and software was done in a few days for my own use -- it looked like a good thing to publish in DDJ. This was a Q&D implementation to minimize cost and effort, it has been a lot of fun, and seems to have helped a fair number of folks get a cheap hard disk. The Basic MacSCSI board can be obtained assembled and tested along with the sources published in DDJ for $150.00 plus $10.00 COD shipping from Fastime (address below). We offer an 8% discount for moneyorder/cashiers-check with order, which makes the kit $138.00 plus $5.00 shipping for folks outside Calif -- Calif residents need to add 6% sales tax ($8.28). From the rush produced by the DDJ article we are back ordered about 3 weeks on the second build of 100 units. We ship prepaid orders first priority and COD orders as extra units are available. This is done since we are required by law to promtly ship prepaid mail orders, it takes 6 weeks to get our money from UPS COD shipments, --AND-- We feel people should get units in the order they pay for them. 2) Most any hard disk and sasi/scsi controller can be used -- I used the Xebec/Seagate because I had one and it was by far the easiest to get running. To customize the (XEBEC) S1410.c routine for other controllers and drives you need to add some C code to handle bad track or bad sector allocations (very drive/controller specific) -- plus -- issue some form of set-media type command (again very drive/controller specific). The SCSI standard was lacking in this area and every controller is different. A group has recently published a "uniform command set" addendum to the standard so it might get better in a couple years. 3) We are just finishing the second release of the software which includes the bad track/sector support for most of the common controllers plus upto 16 fixed partitions assigned at format time. The partitions are activated from a desk accessory. This product is released as preconfigured binaries for several common controllers. Also included are un-linked Aztec C binaries for the format and driver routines plus source to the controller interface routines (S1410.c in the DDJ piece). The original price was $20.00 (a mistake for several reasons) which we will honor for all pre-paid orders that include a MacSCSI board which we recieve by the end of Sept. After that the price will be $75.00. 4) We have drive kits that are new parts and not particularly cheap since we are not buying a high volumes. You can generally do better by shopping around and doing a little programming to adapt your drive controller combination -- maybe people will post their versions of S1410.c for other configurations for the less skilled users. 5) This board will probably NOT work with the new apple roms when they are released since the board uses the second half of the rom's address space. For use with the new roms and to make internal upgrades easy -- We are currently starting a second generation host adapter very much like a well known internal drive company. It will also use an AP clip over the M68000 and include roms for self boot. We are thinking about a 1mb ram upgrade and video conversion circuit as an option. Since the Clip is $70 and it has much more logic we think the price for the new host adapter will be about $350 mail order from Fastime -- ram versions a little more expensive. We expect these boards to be available mid-late fall -- mostly depending on when Apple releases the new roms. At that time we will offer a 10mb internal drive upgrade kit (like some other well known firm) priced between $1000 and $1500 mail order. We expect the first build of some beta 50 units sometime in October and currently offer a first-come first-serve upgrade for existing MacSCSI users willing to be host adapter beta sites for $250. After that we will offer an $80 credit on MacSCSI upgrades for owners of the current board. 6) We have a 16bit-in and 32bit-out SCSI parallel card just being completed, if any one is interested in parallel I/O for the mac. Each 8 bit port has a read/write strobe on the connector and handshake line. Write for the SCSI2X4 lit. John Bass Fastime Computer Services and Supplies PO. Box 12508 San Luis Obispo, Ca 93406 For info write Chris (dmsd!fastime!duncan) or Mary (fastime!mary) or call (805) 546-9141.