lang@rex.cs.tulane.edu (Raymond Lang) (06/07/90)
I've had an AE PC-Transporter installed in my Apple
IIgs (slot 7) for about two weeks now. I've had a chance to
go through the manual and put the card through its paces.
Here are the problems I'm having:
1) I can't get it to recognize a 3.5 drive connected to the
Apple Smartport (I have one Apple 3.5 and one AMR 3.5 --
I tried both). I followed the steps on pages 137-139, but
when I'm in MS-Dos and try to access the drive, the drive
light comes on but then the system appears to hang. In
fact, I have to enter the AEPC control panel and reboot
to get out of it. I can use either drive in MS-DOS with
no problems if I connect it to the TransDrive, but then
there's problems using that drive from ProDOS (GSOS takes
forever to read or write it, ProTERM doesn't like to read
or write to it at all, and although Appleworks is better,
it sometimes doesn't like to delete).
2) I've been able to set up a MS-DOS "hard disk" on a 3.5
disk previously formatted under ProDOS, but this is
somewhat limiting, since you can't change disks without
going to the AEPC control panel, giving the pathname of
the new disk, and rebooting MS-DOS.
3) Once I resigned myself to connecting the AMR 3.5 to the
TransDrives, I couldn't get it to format 720K without
adding the two 'driver.sys' lines in the config.sys file
below. I tried 'drivparm = /d:2 /f:2' but that didn't
work, although it seems like it should have. With the
config.sys below, the AMR drive serves as C: (360K) and
F: (720K). However, this only works when the last line is
included, which doesn't actually correspond to any
physical device. Could someone explain?
The disk drives for MS-DOS are as follows:
A: TransDrive 1
B: TransDrive 2
C: AMR 3.5 (formats to 360K)
D: hard disk file on a ProDOS
disk in the Apple 3.5
E: hard disk file on GS-Ram+ card
F: AMR 3.5 (formats to 720K)
G: phantom drive, must install this
to get MS-DOS to use F: properly (why?)
I'm using MS-DOS version 3.20 and my config.sys file is
this:
buffers = 20
files = 20
break = on
device = ansi.sys
device = driver.sys /d:2 /f:2
device = driver.sys /d:5 /f:5
What I'd like to do is connect both 3.5 drives to the
SmartPort in order to get full use of them from ProDOS and
still get MS-DOS to recognize one of them as a 720K disk
drive. The manual says you can do this. I'd like to hear
from anyone who has managed to do this or from anyone with
any suggestions (other than "get a hard disk" -- I just
dropped $600 for the Transporter and the drives!)
One last thing, has anyone with a PCT been able to use their
modem from MS-DOS? I tried the program Mirror (a CrossTalk
look-alike) and I couldn't get it to access the modem at
all. The proper drivers appear to be installed. I'd
appreciate it if someone could e-mail me a shareware or PD
communications program they've used successfully with PCT.
Thanks in advance to all replies. Sorry this was so long.
Ray Lang
Internet: lang@rex.cs.tulane.edu