CompuServe Messages

George; Eric has given you some good points. I have three SyQuests used with various machines (two internals – in A2000 type machines) and a Mass external (the newest SyQuest). Be aware that SyQuest has produced some drives with really bad firmware on the drive. Firmware that did almost anything but honor the scsi specifications. Thus you can get into some really bazzar behaviour problems and reach the point where you are beginning to question your own sanity. The "as shipped" scsi ID for the A3000 internal drive is 6 but I would recommend that you do what Eric suggested and make sure by running HDToolBox (DO NOT change anything with HDToolBox). When HDToolBox first comes up, the window will list the scsi devices found on the system including the scsi address for each device. HDToolBox is quite a powerful tool and like most powerful tools can wipe out your HD and all partitions in an instant. One question that you might want to think about before setting up your system is how do you want the system to behave? If you leave the internal drive at 6 and add the SyQuest at some lower value (and in that case it HAS to be a some lower value) then the Amiga will be looking for the SyQuest everytime it boots. If you do not have a cartridge in the drive (or the drive is off) then it will take Ami quite a few extra seconds to boot. If you re-address the internal drive to something lower (ie: 5) and put the SyQuest higher than the internal drive (ie: 6) AND NEVER change the internal drives configuration with HDToolBox when the SyQuest is present then Ami will not delay when booting. You would then have to run something like "scsimounter" (that Eric mentioned) to mount the drive. You really need that utility regardless of how you decide to set the system up anyway. I use the "device" name of SQ0: for all SyQuest cartridges. The SQ reminds me that it is a SyQuest cart. and the zero is because I started using those things long before I realized that there are few restriction on Ami device names. A good reason for sticking with a single device name for all carts is that the device name of the cart that is in the drive when the drive is mounted is device name that will be used until a reboot. Thus, if you used Sq0, Sq1 … Sq'n' for cartridge device names when you set the cartridges up with HDToolBox then the device designation for your syquest drive would depend upon what cartridge was in the drive when it was first mounted. Believe me, this can be a problem for you later on. I don't know if I am making the issue clear or not but let me try this: How would it be if DF0: could have a different device name everytime you booted the computer? You can always use a volume name when you need to deal with a specific disk (and that will be true for the SyQuest also) but it is very handy when the device name stays constant for a particular drive. Since, unlike DF0 (1,2, or 3), the device name is set by reading the RDB on the disk platter, it is up to you to keep it constant. In as system with multiple SyQuest drives this is still not a problem as the system will automagically append a "suffix" to the device name of a device that is the same as an existing device. So if you had two SyQuest drives and each had a cartridge with "SQ0" as a device name then the first one recognized would be "SQ0" and the second would be "SQ0a". -bill