Apple IIgs ROM 03 and SCSI support

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Apple IIgs ROM 03 and SCSI support

Hello everyone, 

 

I have an Apple IIgs ROM 03 with an original Apple SCSI card installed, with the code 607-0291. This card contains the EPROM for Release C. Connected to this card is a SCSI-to-SD card adapter, EasySCSI VER: 1.1-20231116. On this controller, a 128GB Micro SD is installed, within which there are six virtual hard disk images in .hda format, each with a capacity of 4GB. Each of these images was created by me using CiderPress II ver 1.0.6, and the chosen file system is HFS. Essentially, the goal of the project is to make GS/OS 6.0.4 recognize the six SCSI hard drives, achieving a total of 24GB. For obvious reasons, this isn't working at the moment, and I’m writing to say that I’d have been very surprised if it had worked, given the age of the SCSI controller installed in slot 6 of the Apple IIgs in question. I also have doubts about the wiring between the SCSI card and EasySCSI, as there is a flat-to-DB50 cable between them, connected to a DB50-to-DB25 adapter. This is directly connected to the SCSI controller in slot 6. One last thing to highlight: since the DB25 connector of the SCSI in slot 6 doesn’t provide the +5V power to the EasySCSI terminator, I’m supplying it via USB with +5V from an alternative Apple II power supply I purchased from ReactiveMicro. Additionally, in my opinion, I don't think there are compatibility issues between the EasySCSI and the 128GB Micro SD I’ve installed, as I created the virtual HDs with the correct names according to the instructions I found on GitHub. As you can see from the log I’ll attach, it seems that EasySCSI was able to correctly detect the disks and is also configured properly. However, upon powering on, a red LED remains steadily lit, indicating an issue. Beyond the wiring, I suspect the Apple SCSI card 607-0291 may not be compatible for this purpose. I have yet to try creating a 32MB ProDOS-formatted disk to see if it works, and I will certainly do this today. Do you have any advice regarding a different SCSI controller I could use in slot 6, which has been tested to manage 4GB HDs partitioned correctly (i.e., with two 2GB partitions each)? For now, I send you all my best regards and thank anyone who replies!

 

BlueSCSI https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSIVER: 1.1-20231116DEBUG:0SDCard Info: Format:exFATSPI speed: 50Mhz Max Filename Length:64 MID:9F OID:TI Name:SD128 Date:11/2023 Serial:2031100765

hd00_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiB - hd10_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiB - hd20_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiB - hd30_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiB - hd40_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiB - hd50_512.hda HDD / 4294967296bytes / 4194304KiB / 4096MiBID:LUN0: 0: 512: 1: 512: 2: 512: 3: 512: 4: 512: 5: 512: 6:----:Finished configuration - Starting BlueSCSI

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Aren't the HFS volumes

Aren't the HFS volumes limited to 2GB, not 4? Source: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/07/02/2-gb-smartport-hard-drive-for-apple-iigs/

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CVT wrote:Aren't the HFS
CVT wrote:

Aren't the HFS volumes limited to 2GB, not 4? Source: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/07/02/2-gb-smartport-hard-drive-for-apple-iigs/

I think you can handle a 4GB HD partitioned into 2 2GB volumes and that's what I'm trying to do.

 

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Sorry if I missed it or don't

Sorry if I missed it or don't understand the exact issue. But what drive are you booting from? AFAIK, you still need a ProDOS drive to boot from. GSOS cannot boot from an HFS drive. It can see them once booted using a FST, but you still need to boot from ProDOS.

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I know, and that's why the

I know, and that's why the HFS disks will only be used for data and not for the operating system. I want the system to boot from ProDOS.

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The Apple SCSI card wants to

The Apple SCSI card wants to boot off the first partition. Could be that it isn’t seeing the ProDOS partition as the first.

If you can run Apples Advanced Disk Utility it might tell you what’s going on.

 

Doing the Term power mod would be nice to do in the future.

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Yesterday I managed to create

Yesterday I managed to create four virtual disks, each with a capacity of 3GB, and make them visible in GS/OS 6.0.4 as four Smartport disks. I achieved this without partitioning them by using an HFS driver that was shared with me by a friend and that replaces the original HFS driver. The driver version is 1.0.4 beta. While these disks are extremely slow, especially during write operations, I now have 12GB of hard disk space distributed across four units. The slowness is due to the fact that I am emulating them using BigMessOfWire's Floppy Emu, and performance depends on the MicroSD's speed. When the computer starts up, the Floppy Emu takes so long to initiate the emulation of the four disks that, once GS/OS starts, I have to reboot for them to be recognized. The only workaround is to delay GS/OS's startup by entering the IIgs configuration menu with the Apple-Control-Esc keyboard shortcut. It would have been ideal if the Floppy Emu had been designed to allow external power supply besides via the flat cable. Anyway, I also tried creating a 32MB ProDOS disk using EasySCSI to see if controller 607-0291 would recognize it, but this attempt also failed. Lastly, the 3GB disks I added to the Floppy Emu's MicroSD had to be created in .po format to be recognized. They didn't work in hdv format. Furthermore, I had to format the MicroSD so the files were contiguous in order for them to be used. It would also be great if BigMessOfWire updated their Floppy Emu to support MicroSD cards formatted with ExFAT, allowing it to handle 4 Smartport HDs of 4GB instead of 3GB. When I created a 4GB disk image using CiderPress II 1.0.6, I couldn't copy it to the MicroSD because the file slightly exceeded the 4GB FAT32 limit

 

https://www.callapple.org/vintage-apple-computers/apple-iigs/hfs-1-04-beta-announced/

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Sid6.7 wrote:...It would also
Sid6.7 wrote:

...

It would also be great if BigMessOfWire updated their Floppy Emu to support MicroSD cards formatted with ExFAT, allowing it to handle 4 Smartport HDs of 4GB instead of 3GB. When I created a 4GB disk image using CiderPress II 1.0.6, I couldn't copy it to the MicroSD because the file slightly exceeded the 4GB FAT32 limit

 

No need. The limit of FAT32 is 4GB minus 1 byte. So what you can do is specify the size in CiderPress II to 4GB - 1K = 4194303K, which fits on a FAT32 formatted SD card:

 

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To tell you the truth, I had
To tell you the truth, I had thought about it and didn't do it. That said: you are right.
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