tomj@pro-pac.cts.com (Tom Jenkins) (06/12/89)
Some time ago, I had a problem with a CMS SCSI card. Seems it would "hang"
after being on for a couple of minutes. Turned out it was the card and not
the drive. Was just wondering - anyone else have problems with the CMS SCSI
card? How 'bout the drive? I've had mine (CMS-60) for about a year with no
other problems. Also, have the utilities been upgraded since June 1988? Last
question - will the Apple SCSI card work with the CMS 60M?
--
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INET: tomj@pro-pac.CTS.COM - BITNET: pro-pac.UUCP!tomj@PSUVAX1jazzman@claris.com (Sydney R. Polk) (06/13/89)
From article <8906120556.AA05813@crash.cts.com>, by tomj@pro-pac.cts.com (Tom Jenkins): > Some time ago, I had a problem with a CMS SCSI card. Seems it would "hang" > after being on for a couple of minutes. Turned out it was the card and not > the drive. Was just wondering - anyone else have problems with the CMS SCSI > card? How 'bout the drive? I've had mine (CMS-60) for about a year with no > other problems. Also, have the utilities been upgraded since June 1988? Last > question - will the Apple SCSI card work with the CMS 60M? We started using CMS drives at StyleWare a couple of years ago. Since then there has been a ROM revision in the card that is necessary to run on the "new" ROMS on the GS. We have had problems with power supplies dying (three have died in two years), but the speed and reliability of the media is wonderful. We had some old Siders that whined and complained, and if your machine crashed so bad that you had to power down (happens in developement sometimes), the heads could not be parked and we risked losing stuff. The CMS cards do have one annoying feature though. It turns of interrupts when booting. This means that some of the inits with system 5.0 hang waiting for an interrupt. This is really annoying. Other than that, it's a great drive. I have a 60 on my GS and on my Mac and they are fast, quiet and reliable. -- Syd Polk | Wherever you go, there you are. jazzman@claris.com | Let the music be your light. GO 'STROS! | These opinions are mine. Any resemblence to other GO RICE! | opinions, real or fictitious, is purely coincidence.
bsherman@pro-exchange.cts.com (Bob Sherman) (06/13/89)
Comment to message from: pnet01!crash!pro-pac.cts.com!tomj (Tom Jenkins) Have you tried telling CMS about the problem you are having with your SCSI card? It seems to me that they were offering a ROM upgrade about a year ago to those that had a certain series of ROM's that had a manufacturing problem.. Get ALL of the info off of your ROM chip and call them, that could be your problem, and the upgrade was free when I got mine.. Yes, the Apple SCSI will work very well with the CMS SCSI drives. After all, they plug directly into a Mac, dont they?? :-) The only difference between the Apple II versions and the Mac versions is the addition of the SCSI card, and the additional price for the card. We have 3 of their drives here, two we purchased as Apple II drives with their card, and one we purchased as a Mac drive, and added our own Apple SCSI card to (running on a GS).. All are doing quite well. UUCP: crash!pro-exchange!bsherman ARPA: crash!pro-exchange!bsherman@nosc.mil INET: bsherman@pro-exchange.cts.com
bobl@pro-graphics.UUCP (Bob Lindabury) (06/14/89)
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.
bobl@pro-graphics.UUCP (Bob Lindabury) (06/14/89)
Network Comment: to #21 by pnet01!crash!apple.com!claris!jazzman Also, you don't NEED a CMS brand drive to do the same thing. You can easily put together your OWN case and Seagate STXXXN drive at a much lower cost and save yourself the hassle of poor power supplies. I purchased from CMS a few years ago and it took 3 replacements of faulty drives to finally get one drive that works fine. When it came to purchase another hard drive, I decided to build my own. Boy was I happy I did! I saved myself an easy $300-400 on the drive and I put it all in a Mac Crate case with a great powersupply. It's been running like a champ ever since. If anyone is interested in building thier own hard drives, I have several files that give you a step-by-step procedure for doing just that. I should be able to RCP or just mail the files to whoever is interested. Leave mail if you want the files. Bob