[Coco] OT old macs ...

[Kevin Diggs]

Hi,

	This vintage of Mac boots into MacOS before Linux. But it is running 
YellowDog 2.1 (kernel 2.4.10). The source file for the external bus 
driver is identical in 2.4.28. As already mentioned, I have the external 
bus as a module. If I turn on the drive after boot and then load the 
external bus driver I get an error.

Hazelton wrote:
>>
> What are you running for OS? If you are trying to run 10.X with Xfacto
> then as of 3.0 the external Scsi port had timing issues.  Only "Fast
> Scsi" port worked reliable for HD and CD-ROM.  3.1 supposed to fix this,
> just downloaded 3.1a3, to see if my other scsi ports work.

	The Exabyte 8700 is an external unit with the mini 50 connector. 
Hooking that up to the Mesh's (internal bus) ribbon cable would be 
difficult. Would not know where to start.

	What I should do is drop into OF (OpenFirmware) and see if it can see 
the drive using the show-children word (Forth command?):

: probe-scsi open-dev " show-children" 2 pick $call-method close-dev ;

or

" scsi" select-dev show-children unselect-dev
(can use " scsi-int" for the internal bus)

	The first defines a function. Used I think like '" scsi" probe-scsi'.

> 
> I know it might be a pain, but if you could hook it up (temporary) to
> the same bus as the HD, That may help figure out the problem.
> 

	Don't quite know where you are going here. I think both interfaces are 
SCSI-2. I seem to remember that NetBSD pushes the external bus to 6.25 
MHz on a 9600. Besides the only difference between the two that might 
affect (effect?) compatibility is that selection is optional in SCSI 1, 
right?

> Hope this helps.  I've never actually hooked up a Tape drive to my Mac.
>  I think that my Tape drive will not drop down to scsi-1, needs to be
> Scsi-2 as documented on the drive.  It works on my Linux box.   Maybe if
> you really want a tape drive on that 8600, you can put Linux on it? just
> a random thought.
> 
> ~David Hazelton
> 

	I just love these 8600s. Lots of fun hardware (video in AND out)!. And 
a company called Powerlogix makes a 1 GHz 750 upgrade card for $239. 
Bought this one on EBay for $29 (+ $25). Surprisingly, the 100 MB zip 
drive works. It alone is probably worth $20 (with shipping).

	Sorry for the off topic rambling, but anybody know why Apple does not 
support these upgrade cards? From what I understand M$ made zillions of 
$$$ selling software. Thats a lot of X sets they are losing.

					kevin