Well I am not an "expert" on the CMS Apple II SCSI card, but as I stated I do have 3 of them, and have worked long and hard to get them up and running... So.... The following is what I have on the CMS SCSI as culled from various sources. Thank you to the frequenters of the Delphi Apple II Hardware Hacker Forum, the hardware Gurus to be found on Syndicomm's A2Central, and most especially my thanks to Mr. Tony Diaz who is probably the world's greatest living repository of Apple II hardware information. Another source of useful info is the Jack Countryman letter which can be found in the CSA2 Hardware FAQ. This last has some useful info on mapping the 1989 ROM card's jumpers. Do NOT use it for the 1990. First things first. If you have a CMS card with the 1990 revision of the ROM, you will need the driver and the utility program. The last (4th) download on this link: http://www.allelec.com/apple2sw.htm contains the utility and driver. Other downloads are out there, but I know this one is clean and accurate. ------ The CMS card was made in 3 flavors: 1987, 1989 and 1990 The difference can be determined by the date on the ROM chip label. I have an example of each ROM, but as I actually like to USE my CMS cards and as the 1990 one is the only truly useable, I cloned its ROM and installed it on the other 2. ------- Here is some information from Chuck Newby from a 1999 Delphi post: The CMS SCSI Card works a little like your reprogrammed SASI/SCSI card, except the partition maps are not HARD CODED into the chip. While you are limited to only two 32 meg partitions at any one time (actually, only 2 partitions of up to 32 megs each at one time)), you can softswap these in and out. If you hook that same SCSI card up to an Apple IIgs and use the CMS SCSI driver, you are NOT limited to the number of partitions. In either case, though, the partition map is on the card, not on the drive. ------- The above is in reference to the SASI to SCSI upgrade and its similarity to the earlier CMS ROMs NOT the 1990. The 1987 and 1989 CMS card(s) was actually designed to be wed to a CMS hard drive not to the other drives of its era (Rodime, GCC, Apple SC series, etc). Because of this, the jumpers on the card (and there sure are a lot), and the DIP Switches on the drive must match; must correspond. The following is another Delphi post. This time a Q and A; my question, Tony Diaz answers: Does anyone out there have a CMS SD43U or any CMS 40 meg drive? (NOTE: CMS made the SD43, SD43U, SD20, and SD60 drives that I know of; I have one each. Number denotes capacity) I need to know the DIP settings on one. I did an "oops" and changed mine and cannot get it to be recognized now.. 8 switches on the back. If you have one could you please please look and post what they are set to? Tank'ee -Bart >8 switches on the back. First three are SCSI ID in binary, the 8th one is the one that makes it 'work or not'. Nothing else is hooked up. If it's on a CMS SCSI card and you have the old CMS ROM, the SCSI ID's on the card (to which drive it is pointing to) and the drive have to match. 11/9/87 is the original ROM, 3/1/90 is the newest. I do not remember the date for the 1989 ROM that is the middle one which is actually the worse one to have in terms of setting the drive up. But only the 1987 ROM requires matching SCSI ID's on the cards. If you think the CMS A2 SCSI card has a lot of jumpers on it you never saw their MFM and RLL AT drive controllers. Thats why the A2 SCSI card is like that because they had PC designers make it. The design was so stupid that if you bought an 80MB drive you actually got TWO SCSI cards so you could get the third partition. I'm not kidding. Tony (That was before they updated the ROM, which the last, 3/1/90 supported up to 255 partitions, still not Inside Mac Vol. 5 compatible though) ------- As you can See CMS never followed anything resembling SCSI standards in their design. And this brings to mind another point and excuse the shouting but: NEVER EVER EVER! HOOK A SCSI DRIVE FORMATED ON A MAC, PC, OR STANDARD APPLE HS, Rev C OR RAMFAST TO A CMS CARD. I will say that again: Never hook a standard formatted SCSI drive to a CMS card. It will not work. It WILL repeat WILL corrupt the data on the drive, and it could actually cause physical damage. I learned this one the hard way and have a very pretty Apple 40SC box with a dead drive in it as a reminder of this lesson. -------- As to the CMS SCSI utility and built in "Control Panel": There are actually 2 utilities. The 1st you do not run into very often. It was designed specifically to low level format and prep the CMS built hard drives and only these drives are selectable from the menu. I do have a floppy around with that one some where. The other utility is far more useful in that it provides the ability to format most drives for a CMS card. (NOTE: See above; once this formatter is used on a drive this drive can no longer be used with another SCSI card until another format is performed via another utility such as the Apple ones on a Mac or the Chinook or ADU). Currently I do not have the screen in front of me so I am winging this from memory: When the utility is launched, or when the 1990 rev CMS is 1st booted with card in slot 7 or with its slot selected as boot in a GS, you will get a screen with a CMS SCSI splash on top and 2 choices: R or Q. Drives may or may not be present If not there will be a flashing "No Drives Present". If you have a slow drive it will not be recognized right off. Select R to "Rescan" the SCSI BUS. You should be rewarded with a blink of the drive's seek light. I would suggest doing this a few times and especially if you have more then one drive. I have one CMS card with 5 drives on it. drive ID 6 is the preferred boot drive but it is the slowest. If I do a R a few times though it shows up as the 1st drive. (by the way, CMS scans top down, highest number to lowest so set your boot disk to a high number on the SCSI chain). Once you see your drive displayed on the "control panel" (It looks like: #6, GCC (or other drive name),bunchanumbersandgiberish then the next line only #5 or whatever), hit "Q" which quits the utility and starts the boot. I will try to include an addendum to this describing the LLF utility soon, but I do not have it currently in front of me. I do recall it is a series of Yes/No questions and selecting yes throughout does the trick. ------- Other notes on the CMS card: If yours is a 1987 or 1989, find a way to upgrade to 1990. Even the 1990 will not work with any CDROM or other "mountable" drive. Only with a standard fixed SCSI hard drive. I cannot actually say that a Zip drive won't work; I do not have a SCSI one. But, I have tried it with Seagate Bernoulli and 44 meg cartridge drives, many and various CDROMs, a Asante EN/SC (hope springs eternal ;) and anything else I could think of or scrounge with a SCSI BUS on it. Note: It makes a DONG (I have the mount sound on) when the CDROM is inserted but no drive ever appears on the desktop. CMS is slower then a Apple High Speed, but not dramatically so in an unaccelerated GS. I have one CMS on a GS that also has a Apple High Speed on it (CMS in slot 4, Apple in 2). I have timed boots on both and they come up about the same. The CMS works great on a IIe. I have a IIe with 2 CMS 20 meg drives (SD20) on a CMS card (plus a Liron 3.5, a standard 5.25., Workstation card, SSC, Mousecard, Echo II and AE Ram III with a piggyback and a RGB card. Oh, and a AE power supply. yes, its on steriods ;) Conclusion: If you want a cheap useable SCSI card, the CMS beats having nothing at all. It is not a Apple or Ramfast card. but, it is a SCSI. All things considered I would recommend a Focus before a CMS, but , if you have one, go for it. -Bart Useless factoid: These are the SCSI cards I know of. Are there any others? CMS, Ohio Kache SCSI, Cirtech , Chinook, Apple (Rev A-C) and High Speed, Ramfast. Oh,and also the Xebec (Sider) SASI. -- Posted from user101.saif.com [208.139.10.101] via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG