I picked up a ST351A/X hard drive which has an 8 bit mode to see if I could get it working with an Innerdrive card.
I set the jumpers for 8 bit, the drive spins up and kerchuffs when I start up the IIgs. The utilities disk is GSOS and stops halfway through the boot. Unfortunately the only utilities I’ve seen are GSOS.
I formatted the drive with the MicroDrive Turbo and Vulcan cards but the formatting is different from the Innerdrive cards. So I know the card, cable and drive are working, just not together. I’m wondering if the Innerdrive cards ROM might only allow it to work with WD hard drives. I can’t think of anything more I can do at this point.
On the good side I found another hard drive that will work natively with the Vulcan.
I remember having issues with the ST-351A/X in 8-bit mode on the CDrive. It uses virtually the same code as the Inner/Outer Drive. Seems like it should work but there was some difference.
You should be able to get it working with an ST-325X if you can find one.
I'll keep an eye out for a ST-325X but they’re getting into the hens teeth category now.
Is there anything special about the ST-325X? I mean it's just an IDE drive, right, albeit 8-bit only? Could a CF card IDE adapter be used in its place?
Technically, yes. But these early Apple II hard drive solutions had storage size and geometry hard coded into the firmware. I did an update to the CDrive that worked with CF card (IDEA2C) but the card needed a specific formatting. It worked with existing CF cards for the MicroDrive Turbo but that formatting utility also would have needed modification.
The InnerDrive did work with 4 different geometries:
20MB 17 sector, 4 head, 615 track
20MB 27 sector, 2 head, 782 track
30MB 27 sector, 3 head, 782 track
40MB 27 sector, 4 head, 782 track
so it's possible there are other drives out there that could work.
Now that you mention it, you're right - I do remember now that hard drives for Apple's computers had to be Apple specific back then. It was a constant source of frustration becasue they inevitably cost quite a bit more than their garden variety stablemates for the IBM PC platform.
@Wayne, if I remember correctly, the jumper settings information available on the net for the 8-bit mode of ST351A/X is wrong. Could you post a picture of your jumpers, I must have a PC/XT with such drive... I will look for it and disassemble it if you need that information.
20261.jpg
@Wayne check your private email.
Tell us more. I'd like to know as well!
I never had the privilege of owning an InnerDrive system. I loved the advertisements though. About a decade or so ago, I did acquire the case/psu off eBay.
Someone had modded it and stuffed a SCSI drive in it and cut away the part of the case that transitions from the narrow part to the wider part.
I used some sheet aluminum to fill in the gap where the original steel was, got rid of the PSU and put in a lower profile EOS 80W quad voltage one in. But because it wasn't designed for the space, it couldn't accommodate it with the IEC connector so it protruded into the drive bay a couple centimeters.
I was determined to put a mechanical hard drive in it, and settled on a pair of NOS 2.5" notebook hard drives which just fit using 2.5 to 3.5 brackets.
Because I had an extra MicroDrive Turbo, I selected it to be the controller. Back when Joachim of SHH Systeme developed the MDT, he did market it was a replacement controller for AE Vulcans and AI InnerDrives so it could use more modern higher capacity IDE drives. I think the slogan was something like 'making hard drives RamFAST'
Being that you have an MDT, I would say use it to run your drive until you can find a mechanism that works with your InnerDrive controller. I do applaud your determination to make the system functional to as close as it would have been in it's day
Actually I have a few InnerDrives but only a couple have working original drives. I’ve installed regular ide drives in them that I’ve used with a MicroDrive or MDT, however I would like to get the rest running with 8 bit drives.
Finding a power supply that fits and still allows room for a 3.5” drive is hard. I’ve been using a version of the original power supply though it needs some modding to fit.
Installing a 3.5” drive is a little harder as they use a 50 pin cable and the height of the InnerDrive case isn’t enough. The econ Pegasus got around that by using a custom 50 to 25 cable. I could use a 2.5” drive and an adapter but I’d sooner stay with 3.5”. Anyways I have some SCSI Expanders for that, though they do take up a slot.
Back in the day I modded my Vulcan to use a SCSI drive when the original IDE drive died. Someone on comp.sys.apple2 made a 50 to 25 pin adapter and I crimped a 26 pin IDC connector on the ribbon cable to my RamFAST Rev D.
I've given up a long time ago of finding 8 bit drives to work on my Vulcans.
There is a seller on eBay that has been able to format some CF cards for Vulcans, so I've gone that route for one.
On my other Vulcan I did a combo 3.5 IDE drive and CF card with an MDT for the controller
I wish I bought an Econ Pegasus. It's the only PSU/hard drive system I never owned. I did see one briefly at Apple Expo West in 1993
The Vulcan is pretty limited in drives that it’ll recognize. However I discovered a way to use a more recent ide drive in one. I used a program to write a disk image onto a larger ide drive so that the Vulcan thinks it has a compatible drive. As a bonus the newer drives are faster and quieter.