phaedrus@milton.u.washington.edu (Mark Phaedrus) (04/03/91)
In a previous posting, I described an accident I had involving the
disk port on my Rev 01 IIGS, which left drive 1 constantly spinning whenever
the machine was on (therefore rendering drive 2 useless, since there's not
enough power for both drives to spin properly at once, and presumably making
disks in drive 1 wear out much faster). Several people let me know that it
was probably either a (fixable) problem in the daisychain circuitry of the
drive 1 I was using, or a (nonfixable other than by motherboard swap) problem
in the Smartport itself. Since the problem persists no matter whose drives I
try hooking up, and whether I use 5.25" or 3.5" drives (if I have both kinds
hooked up, *both* drive 1's are always on), and since my drives work fine on
other machines, it seems pretty safe to conclude that the Smartport is the
culprit.
Considering the price the local dealers are quoting for a motherboard swap
to fix the problem, and that the machine works fine in every other respect, it
seems to me that I could probably save some money by just ignoring the
Smartport and using plugged-in disk controller cards to control the drives.
Could you helpful folks give me some advice on what disk controller cards are
best and cheapest, and what places would be good to order the controller
card(s) from? The type and number of drives I have hooked up varies; I'd need
to be able to accomodate two 5.25" drives and two 3.5" drives hooked up at once
(like the Smartport can, or in my case could... :( ) One card to do the whole
job would be nice, but I have plenty of slots and power for two.
Email would be most convenient, but post if necessary. Thanks again for
the help.
(Apologies for cluttering the net with this, but the dealer is completely
clueless, and since the GS is my secondary machine now, I'm pretty out of touch
myself.)
--
Internet: phaedrus@u.washington.edu (University of Washington, Seattle)
The views expressed here are not those of this station or its management.
"If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs,drudman@hpcc01.HP.COM (Drew Rudman) (04/09/91)
No such thing as a smart port card for the GS. You can pick up a 3.5" UNIDISK controller, but you must have 3.5" UNIDISKS for it to work. If yoy have just plain grey Apple 3.5" drives, you MUST replace the motherboad. The smartport is available only on the motherboard. I think Central Point SOftware (makers of the Laser 128) had a multi-drive controller card. It may support the Apple 3.5" but don't count on it or Central Point even bein in business nowadays... Sorry... _____________________________________________________________________________ | | | | Drew Rudman | 9600 HST Call 60 megs | | drewr@hpiosa.corp.hp.com or | THE CHARGE | | drudman@hpcc01.corp.hp.com | IBM/Apple 24 hrs/day | | Axe Slinger (#1)@The Charge | (415) 321-4713 - Menlo Park, CA | |______________________________|______________________________________________|