gt0852c@prism.gatech.EDU (Daniel Rothman) (03/12/91)
I have a problem. As a new network admin, i have discovered two AGA Discus r/w optical drives lying dormant. These appear to be really nice little drives, and have cartridges of 300M/side. They claim to be SCSI, with compatibility to ANSI x3.131/1986, as well as being "Novell certified" for use with Netware 386 SFT. Optimally, I'd like to hang them off of the IBM PS/2 model 80 we're using as a Novell file server. Unfortunately, the little buggers come with "SCSI adapter cards" for use with the IBM AT Bus. The next step in this conendrum is that i cannot find AGA nowadays. They seem to have gone under, with no forwarding address and no pointers to tech-support. 1) anybody heard of Advanced Graphics Application (AGA) or their tech support people? 2) Can anyone suggest to me a way to get these beasts to talk to a micro-channel machine in any capacity? 3) can anyone explain to me what SCSI compatibility with ANSI x3.131/1986 means, and how this may be of benefit to me? Failed attempt: I tried to bring one of the beasts home, to talk to my Mac through its SCSI port. Despit the best intentions, the suggested dip settings and such, I simply could not get my mac to recognize this box as SCSI 1. I attempted to use a fresh cartridge, and install some Mac drivers on it, but SF&I 1.01 showed an error on the drive. This is the software that's supposed to format and partition SCSI hard drives for a mac. The docs I have from AGA are really scimpy (of course) and don't help at all in the configuration of the drive, although they are pretty good for the AT card configuration. Daniel Rothman