#SyquestHD Help
18 messages in this thread
I have ordered a Syquest 44MB drive in an external box for my stock A3000
25/40. The dealer, in a town somewhat far away, agreed to install the drive in
the box, format the disk and ship it to me. The external box has its own power
supply and fan, so I hope to avoid problems with the A3000's small power
supply. I would be interested to hear from anyone who is using one of these
drives with a 3000. I have retained the 3000's factory installed hard drive
partitions, named WB_2.x: and work:. What do I call the Syquest, how do I get
the system to recognize it, etc.? Are there any files in the library which will
help inform me better about installing and using this hardware? Thanks George
Roland
George:
Call your new drive whatever you want!!!
-Jonathan
I just put a Syquest 44/88MB drive on my A3000 w/o any problems at all.
A few things to beware of:
If the Syquest is the only device plugged into your SCSI port, it should
be terminated. A terminator is a means of noise reduction for the SCSI
bus, and you should ALWAYS terminate the last device on the SCSI chain,
even if you only have one device plugged in. (Make sure that the dealer
puts the drive in a box with TWO (2) SCSI connectors [they should look
just like the Centronics connector on your printer, only bigger]. If you
don't, it'll be a REAL pain to add anything else like a CD-ROM player
later. Also, MAKE SURE the guy takes off the internal terminating
resistors, and sells you an external terminator plug. If you use an
external terminator plug, you'll never have to worry about which device is
terminated and which isn't.)
Make sure the SCSI ID doesn't match the ID of your internal drive(s). To
determine the ID of your current drives, use the HDToolBox utility that is
in Tools directory of your system partition. (You can also use this
program to perform the low-level formatting you'll need to do to the
cartridge.) When you run HDToolbox, you'll get a list of all the drives on
the SCSI bus. It's fairly self explanatory, and I believe it's fairly well
documented in the manual. The Syquest SCSI ID should be settable by a
small switch on the back of the case.
A really cool utility I got from CIS is called SCSIMounter, and it allows
you to mount a cartridge after the system has booted up. I can't remember,
but I think it was in the AmigaUser libraries. (I'd recommend that you GO
AMIGAFF, and search for SCSI.)
Finally, I have tried a number of Syquest boxes on my A3000, and some of
them seem to cause a problem with the Amiga Power Supply. If the Syquest
box is turned on BEFORE the A3000, the A3000 just won't come on. (I
thought my power supply had fried the first time.) I get around this
problem by turning on the A3000 first, and THEN turn on the Syquest drive
immediately thereafter.
Good Luck, Syquests are fun!
Erik Flom
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
You say that SyQuest sometimes had bad firmware. Do you know wich revision ?? I
got two SyQuest revision BBA and have broken five cartridges without reason. Do
you know wich is the safest revision ?? Ciao MB-)
Massimo;
No, I sure don't know. The drives are all in their boxes. The one on
this machine (one of the older SyQuests that I have identifies itself as
an F5E firmware version). The Mass SyQuest identifies itself as an F7P
drive.
Both of these drives work but the F5E does hang occassionally but I am not
sure that it is necessarily the drive's fault.
BTW, I should have mentioned in my last posting that SyQuest was VERY good
about trying to fix the problems with my first and second drives (the
third has never given any trouble). It was just that having to send one
of the drives to SyQuest three times began to get a little "old."
-bill
The F5E revision is one that was specifically bugged in certain Mac
magazines. I believe that Mass Micro was offering a free trade-in to
owners of that drive. This was a few years ago, though, so I'm not sure if
they still offer the repair. You might try contacting SyQuest directly.
Erik Flom
You just KNOW how much I want to tear into that A3000T (again) to pull
that SyQuest out for a ROM refit 🙁
I suppose that I should as the drive will hang running disksalv!
Thanks Eric
-bill
I hope the 3000T is no worse than the 3000!
After installing, then removing my 040 accelereator more than a dozen
times, I've gotten it down to a fine art. I can strip the 3000 down to the
motherboard within 10 minutes. The first time trying to put it back
together took nearly an hour. Talk about piss-poor planning!
Good Luck on the SyQuest.
Erik Flom
Erik;
Well, yes and no. If you can do what you want to do without removing the
drive bay then the A3000T is nicer than the A3000, but if that drive bay
has to come out…
I have actually been about to install, remove and install both fast and
chip memory without removal of the drive bay. Believe me, the movtivation
for trying that was having removed it before!
If you count finding a place to set the keyboard, mouse and monitor, it
takes me about ten minutes to get an A3000 down to bare box and
motherboard too.
-bill
Here's hoping the 4000T learned from the errors of the 3000T.
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Not bloody likely,
-bill
I hope so, I have experienced the dead of six (six!) cartridge and Syquest
Europe has only said: 1) Keep the cartridge in the envelope 2)… and
everything was written in the box. I hope that the dead of the cartridges is
due to the drives…. Thanx MB-)
PMFJI, but re: dead syquest disks, this exactly why I moved to Optical
drives: Syquests are great at dying. As Tech Manager at a DTP group, I've
gone through maybe 500 syquests in about 2 years. I've had maybe 100 go
bad. Opticals don't have that problem. Ever since we switched over, I've
had only 1 out of maybe 300 go bad on me, and that was because the shutter
broke!
Just my $.02
Miguel ——– AP, AP, and away!
Now how this information on reliability of syquest carts comes
out….after I bought one. 🙁 They (Syquest) told me the reason my 1st
cart went bad ofter 20hrs of use was cigerette smoke after only 20 hrs.
I'm scared now to put important data on the cart, it has been relgated to
a holding pen for transitional graphics.
====>>> Motorola 68030 Inside <<<====
Over the last few months I would every now and then pipe up and tell
people about the wonders of the Magneto Optical 128 MB disk drive, but
alas, it tends to fall on deaf ears. You would think I was an Amigazoid
surrounded by PC users! 8)
Miguel ——– AP, AP, and away!
I've been listening 🙂
I'd probably pick the MO 128MB drive over the new Syquest.
But my true preference would be a huge hard drive and a good tape backup
system.
Bob Comer — Cruising the nets on AutoPilot from Cheyenne, Wyoming
Well, I have a Syquest 88 myself. Just make sure that the Syquest is
terminated INTERNALLY and that the SCSI cable is reasonably short, and
it should work just fine.
One other thing. Turn it on and feed it a cartridge BEFORE you turn on
the computer. You also may want to get ScsiMounter from Libs
(SCSIMT.L??) so you can deal with differently partitioned cartridges.
Me, I just have 2 identically partitioned cartridges (1 87-88 MB
partition) and swap them at will. Nice toys…