DSEAH@WPI.BITNET (02/13/88)
I have heard unvalidated rumors that you can plug a laser 128 800K drive right into the Smartport on my GS. Is this true? Is there provision for daisy chaining it to my 5.25 and 3.5 drives? Since the Apple 3.5 drive is "dumb", I was wondering if other Macintosh external drives were also "dumb". Can you plug any "dumb" drive into an Apple IIgs? Also, I haven't been able to find a bookstore that carries the Apple IIGS toolbox reference manuals. I have to order them from some place in Canada or get the unhelpful folks at Computerland to scrooge up some. Is there a good reason why bookstores don't carry them? Or are they just too damn BITNET: DSEAH@WPI.BITNET INTERNET: DSEAH%WPI.BITNET@CUNYUM.CUNY.EDU
tgm@xroads.UUCP (Sloan Tash) (02/15/88)
In article <8802121945.AA00401@wpi.local>, DSEAH@WPI.BITNET writes: > I have heard unvalidated rumors that you can plug a laser 128 800K drive > right into the Smartport on my GS. Is this true? Is there provision for > daisy chaining it to my 5.25 and 3.5 drives? If, for some reason, you would want to buy a Central Point 800K drive, you would need the Universal Disk Controller to connect it to a IIgs. It works straight with the Mac, though. I found out the hard way that the drive is not worth the cheap amount they charge for it. It creates errors on the disk. My BBS was down about 2 days out of every week. Definately not worth it. You have to reformat any disks it wastes, and it is very time consuming. In addition, the Univerasal Disk Controller (the only good part of the whole thing) is too long for a IIgs. It works on the //e upgrade only... Great drive, eh? tgm crash!xroads!tgm -- \ / C r o s s r o a d s C o m m u n i c a t i o n s \/ (602) 971-2240 /\ (602) 992-5007 300|1200 Baud 24 hrs/day / \ ihnp4!crash!xroads!*
SPARKS@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU (02/17/88)
I was in the market for a 3.5 800k drive for a GS too, and I had narrowed it down to Apple's or Central Point Software's. I asked around, and the feeling was that Apple's drive is the only way to go. It seems that the Laser drive is not 100% compatible and won't run everything that will on the Apple 3.5. The difference in price was about $200, so I swallowed hard and dug out my wallet. The Apple 3.5 drive has worked without a hitch. Well, actually there was one problem with set-up that I'll share - it might save someone a lot of headaches! The GS came with a 5.25 smart drive, and we had a old 5.25 with controller card, so the cont. card went in 5, and the new drive went in the smart port - fine. Then I configured the slots so that 5 would be setup as "your (my) - card" - fine. Later, when we daisy chained the 3.5 drive, it wouldn't recognize the 800k drive at all, and skipped over it (flickering the light briefly) whenever we tried to access it. After much headache, it turned out that the solution was to identify the controller card in slot 5 as "smartport." Don't ask me why, but it worked! A note concerning the above: I was troubleshooting this over the phone with no access to documentation, so it is quite possible this was covered in one of the GS manuals. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Yellin - Bitnet:Sparks@Drycas, Arpa: MY0L@Andrew.cmu.edu