IIgs upgrades - getting RamFAST Rev D working

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IIgs upgrades - getting RamFAST Rev D working

Hello,

I have a IIgs ROM3 w/ Transwarp @ 10MHz, CFFA 3000, Apple High Speed SCSI, GSRAM 4Meg, 3.5" HD controller, Uthernet II and RamFAST SCSI Rev D.

Starting Slot Layout...

1 - CFFA 3000
2 - Apple HS SCSI
3 - Transward GS
4 - Blank
5 - Blank
6 - Blank
7 - Blank
M - GSRAM 4000

I picked up a RamFAST Rev D and wanted to put that in slot 7 (the RAM on the GSRAM sticks out too far to put the Apple HS SCSI in slot 7). I know the two cards are comparable in speed but, I liked that it was a short card and the 1Meg cache was a nice touch. O' the card came with 2.01 and 256k and up upgraded it to 1Meg and burned my own 3.01F ROM.

So, after a few hours of work. Here is where I'm at...

1 - CFFA 3000
2 - Blank
3 - Transward GS
4 - Uthernet II (drivers not loaded yet)
5 - Apple 3.5 HD controller
6 - Blank
7 - RamFAST Rev D.
M - GSRAM 4000

The 3.5 HD controller and drives seem to work just fine. The CFFA 3000 and TWGS are stil working great.

Before I tackle the Uthernet II, I wanted to get the RamFAST working, and thus the reason for this post.

On cold start the RamFAST is not recognized. The computer boots using the CFFA 3000 CF card neither CVTech.ROM nor the Apple 80SC does not show up. However, if I issue a restart from GS/OS, the computer reboots and both show up.

Is this a card issue (failing part)?
Timing issue (that I can adjust someplace)?
A power supply issue (not able to provide enough current at startup)?

RamFAST drivers - I did not find any drivers just ROM image and manual and it says to run "RamFAST.System" and do the installation from there. However, I have my CFboot partition as a HFS and therefore the ProDos-8 screen that it dumps me too wont recognize it. It get around this I manually copied the driver from the .ROM image. Not sure if that was enough or if there are other pieces I'm missing.

I have project to upgrade my power supple to 110w using this link as a guide - http://lukazi.blogspot.com/2011/06/power-supply-conversion.html
I have the 110w version of the 80w (LFMVLT80-4000) listed in the article.

So what are your thoughts? Card, drivers, power supply? What do I try next?

Thanks,
John.

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Re: IIgs upgrades - getting RamFAST Rev D working

Hello John,

lets just spot out some points.....
SCSI is SCSI - no matter to which kind of controller the drives are connected to.....

but when powering up there are small differences:

old Apple SCSI cards need more time at power up because "time out" of the card is longer than at the
RAMfast card ( time out is the time that the card waits for the connected drives to spin up and reply to the
card what kind of drives are connected and the way they have been setup with their partitions.... )
The CFFA card has the fastest reply and fastest startup at the beginning.... then the RAMfast will show up
in system 6 with it´s proDOS partitions and finally the Apple SCSI will display it´s ProDOS partitions....

recognize that i´m talking only about the proDOS partitions and not about alternating operation systems....
another problem is the allocation of the partitions to be limited by virtually beeing listed as "slot devices"
meaning that finally the GS operation system can´t handle more than maximum of 14 partitions ( slot 1, D1 and D2
slot 2 D1 and D2, slot 3 D1 and D2 and so on till Slot 7,D1 and D2 )that might be assinged to slot and drive....

( just by the way: at the alternate operation systems there are similar limitations: at UCSD Pascal the partitions
are limited by size and up to maximum of only 4 partitiondrives and at CPM the limits will be up to partitions from
C: to P: .... some also accept drives above P: .... and DOS ? well it´s dependent to the controller used and the
kind of way used mapping partitions to different Volumes each 140 kB each and generally limited to Volumeno.
0 to 255 )

and in general you may tell that each of the alternate operation systems will not display any other alternating
partition from other alternating operation system unless you write a private own converting access software like
chameleon or similar.... and even then there is still the limitation given by the mapping of that devices to slot and drives...

And of course we also must bear in mind the power usage of all that connected drives ( specially when powering up
and beeing limited while trying all together to spin up - even if supplied by external power supply ).....
and i am not talking about the demands of the other cards in the system ( specially the RAM ).....

remind yourself that the drivers in the ROM of each card just defines the kind of access and mappping of the connected units to the operation system.... so the ROM content is only used for each specific card itself !
RAMfast drivers are just used to access the drives connected to the RAMfast card, and APPLE SCSI ROM is only used to access of the drives connected to that card like the ROM of the CFFA only controls the access of the partitions
of the CF card plugged to that interface card....

but there might be trouble ahead while using three different cards because the operation system will assume only one SCSI controlling device and in case of 2 different cards the operation system might not be able to decide which
kind of mapping shall be used: the one from Apple SCSI or the one from RAMfast card ? Up tp my experience
i never had trouble if using the CFFA card only with one kind of SCSI controller ( either Apple SCSI OR RAMfast SCSI ) but if the CFFA card is used for Bootup it´s recommended to startup with the system 6.01 in 16 Bit mode !
And in such case you must still be aware of the slot and drive mapping...: The CFFA card will map it´s devices first to the operation system and then later the other controller may startup mapping it´s devices to the System using the remaining unused slots and drives till there are no map-able slots and drives availiable....

At the other hand at the time the SCSI controllers where added to the operation system there was no CFFA card availiable .... so the operation system only hunted for the SCSI controllers.... therefor there might be a small difference in recognition of the controllers.... therefor it´s recommended to start from the CFFA card because if
you startup from SCSI device it might not search for a card like CFFA and therefor might miss attaching and
mapping that partitions too.... that´s a question i haven´t evaluated up till now....

sincerely speedyG

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Re: IIgs upgrades - getting RamFAST Rev D working

SpeedyG,

I'm not trying to run 3 card, just the CFFA in slot 1 and the RamFAST Rev D in slot 7. I'm only running GS/OS 6.01 booting from the CFFA. When starting from a power on, the system load but my Apple 80SC hard drive does not show up. However, if I restart the computer (shutdown/restart), the computer restarts and the Apple 80SC is displayed (along with the built in ROM image of the RamFAST card.

This tells me that the card is not fully started by the time the GS/OS wants to access it. This to me would either be due to a failing card, or the PS not delivering enough power on cold start. Or I'm missing something.

"And in such case you must still be aware of the slot and drive mapping...: The CFFA card will map it´s devices first to the operation system and then later the other controller may startup mapping it´s devices to the System using the remaining unused slots and drives till there are no map-able slots and drives availiable...."

Given my setup listed in the OP, do you have a recommended slot assignment/mapping?

Thanks,
John.

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Joined: Nov 16 2011 - 07:45
Posts: 2493
Re: IIgs upgrades - getting RamFAST Rev D working

Hello John,

first it would be usefull to know what you call a:
"5 - Apple 3.5 HD controller....."
are you talking about a disk controller for High Density 1,44 MB Diskettes ?

And i explained the fact of the timeouts at startup....
When starting up the 6.01 from the CFFA the operation system has been loaded while the RAMfast was still
collecting info´s from the connected drives and therefor that partitions hadn´t been mapped....

while loading system 6.01 only very small time within the booting process is used for detecting
the controllers by the slot scanning function
.... after that slot scan occured the system won´t
repeat scanning the slots unless you force the system to do that scanning again ....
( for example by re-invoking the the finder to search for availiable volumes )

If you reintialize the system by a restart the controller has collected the info´s about the
connected drives previously ( after startup and after spinning up the drives ) and keeps
that info´s within the small portion of RAM at the card
....
and therefor in the second "reboot" the loading system must not wait for that drives to
appear to the controller - it just must handle at second reboot the remapping....

so if you want the system to recognize that drives after first boot you may instead of rebooting
just force the finder or a diskcopy programm to perform a new scan of the drives after the info´s
of the drives have been collected by the specific controller....

i usually have the RAMfast in slot 7 too because it´s the default slot for that card....
and depending to the configuration with or without SSC or printer i have the CFFA too in slot 1 or slot 2....
depending to the configs made in the option panel.... and the setting to the slot to use for booting and
disable of the slot scan function....
speedyG

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