Latest operating notes for all versions of SCSI Director -------------------------------------------------- The Start Up disk is special! It is used to start up a Classic II, PowerBook, or Quadra Mac. It may be used on any earlier Macs given they've a RAM minimum of 2mb. -------------------------------------------------- Please read this file, it contains important information. IMPORTANT NOTICE: IF INSTALLING ATOP A PREVIOUS APPLE INC. SCSI DRIVER, YOU MUST UNCHECK MANUAL MOUNT ON HFS PARTITIONS WHEN FINISHED. This is because the official loctations that the control panel and our program uses to select "read-only", "manual-mount" etc. are not cleared when installing just the SCSI driver. Oddly, Apple's own SCSI driver uses the same location we use for manual mount, and therefore if updating over Apples own driver, this flag must be cleared by the user with the program (Partition options) or the SCSI Director Assistant CDEV tool. INCOMPATIBLE PROGRAMS: With well over 150,000 people (really) using various versions of SCSI Director's SCSI Driver, we are quite certain that it operates flawlessly on nearly every computer, accelerated computer, and standard SCSI-1, and SCSI-2 devices. Our programs, drivers, and utilities do not "patch" or modify the Macintosh in ANY way! Therefore, problems do not usually occur with our product because of this rigorous design goal. When there are problems, we learn about them fast. There are two well known, long-time, incompatible products. Both are disk manipulation programs that modify the Macintosh ( "patch" ) in order to function. They might, or might not, be at fault for the incompatibilities. The programs are "Sentient Software/ Fifth Generation's Disk Lock", and "Dyna Corporation's Dos Mounter". Do not use our SCSI driver with these two products unless their publishers indicate that they were fixed and can be used. INCOMPATIBLE DEVICES: None, though our SCSI driver, as nearly every other product's driver, requires 512 byte sector removable cartridges, and cannot use 1024 byte sector removable cartridges. Also, it has been discoverd that our driver, and every other popular SCSI driver is incapable of properly supporting a Maxtor LXT 213S on a Mac Plus, though Mac SE's function. Also note, very new SCSI products are sometime not supported by our product until a couple of months after they are mass-shipped and discovered incompatible, therefore if you have a problem with a very new device, see your distributer for a newer version of SCSI Director that will support it. NOTE: About the new Partition copier: Recently a new feature was added for copying Partitions to Partitions at maximum speed. It only copies partitions on disks that have our SCSI driver installed and in use. Note: For safety, the program will not allow you to make backups of a partition that is currently mounted and on-line. It will automatically unmount the partitions for you though. Also, for security it checks for passwords, and will not overwrite passworded partitons (while they are still locked), or copy from them. NOTE: If you ever see a flashing rectangle warning indicator: We revised the SCSI Driver to properly quickly flash a rectangle on the system screen if a utilized SCSI device has been accidentally shutdown or unplugged. Flashing stops when access to previous device is resumed. If it is ever seen, but the device is still connected and seemingly operating, then turning off the device and turning it on again may help reset the condition that caused you to ever see the "flashing rectangle" warning. Note: If you toy around with disconnecting devices from the SCSI bus to experiment with this flashing warning feature, remember two things... Firstly, the standard NCR SCSI chips used in all Macintoshes will not self-time out if they are electronically "seized up", and they can be seized if you foolishly REMOVE PROPER SCSI TERMINATION WHILE THE SCSI CHIP IS ACTIVE! Thus if you must tamper with terminators while using the Macintosh, use SCSI cards with chips that self reset if seized such as NCR 53C710, 53C720, or DO NOT PLAY WITH TERMINATION IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCSI COMMAND. Experiment with drives that have no terminators. Second of all, under many SCSI activities, the Macintosh, (not our SCSI driver), is controlling the SCSI bus and the Macintosh will not print the flashing warning rectangles to the screen, but the Macintosh will wait patiently for a while under most circumstances, before giving control back to our SCSI Driver, which would then display the warning if the error is still present. About the "Reserve System Heap INIT": We wrote a system extension (INIT) for people to reserve non-system 7.0 heap memory, which eliminates the "not enough system heap" error message during mounting of devices without drivers loaded. It is called "Reserve System Heap INIT" and is optional to use. It is found on the distribution diskette of SCSI Director. System heap memory space can be adjusted many other ways (for instance using proprely written "INITS", editing System "boot blocks", using third party System heap expanders, etc.). Our INIT is just a simple way to give our program more memory without changing the System Heap default size. The "Reserve System Heap INIT" could be placed in your system folder, on your own disk, if you are warned by SCSI Director that you have abnormally low System Heap memory when mounting newly available devices. Using System 7.0 eliminates the need for this special INIT, or any other remedy. About the new MicroFinder utility: The program is so large (even though it is self decompressed 54% efficiently) that to maintain a full-size universal COMPLETE System 6.07 system file AND a System 6.07 Finder on the 800K disk is impossible now. Therefore, to preserve the integrity of the System file, we wrote a safe, effective MicroFinder. In addition to merely being small, MicroFinder can automatically locate its default program to run at startup (usually SCSI Director). A second ultra-cool benefit of the MicroFinder is that if you have are using System 7.0 on your hard disks and you run this MicroFinder on a System 6.x disk instead of a real Apple Finder, then the System 7.0 desktop does not get corrupted and does not need to be rebuilt when returning to System 7.0! This can be a big time saver. MicroFinder is called "Finder" and is inside the System folder of the distibution utility diskette. Apple 160 Meg Hard disk owners: NOTE: When using virtual memory in system 7.0 make certain that you do not own an Apple Computer supplied 160 Meg hard disk. If so, even on a Mac IIfx, if it has ROM version 5342 then it will not function. The product is 94221-5, an old CDC or Seagate mechanism. Apple's own SCSI driver may be necessary, if Apple's seems to function reliably. INSIGHT I-325VM Floptical SCSI device owners: A design "feature" of the INSIGHT locks itself from writing at each and every startup! If you own one, SCSI Directors SCSI driver unlocks (Un-Write Protects) it at powerup or reset of SCSI Bus, so it can function. If you own a INSIGHT with new firmware, then to format, or partition, you must have had a disk inserted BEFORE selecting "ID Search", if not hit the "ID Search" button again before proceding. This is a INSIGHT flaw resulting from a INSIGHT design change as of mid-July 1991. Incredibly, not only is the device "locked" at powerup but also SCSI bus resets. The I-325VM was designated an MS-DOS "floppy" device by a committee (INSITE, Adaptec, Data Tech/Qume, Future Domain, Iomega, and Rancho) to prevent usage of the device for non-MS-DOS purposes!. It is still cool enough to be considered a desirable Macintosh device. NOTE: Firmware 3.67 and beyond of INSIGHT I-325VM Floptical disk drive has a different type of media formatting, resulting in previously formatted disks from previous Firmware chips being totally incompatible and unreadable! Reformatting them is the only solution to continue using the older disks. To be fair, officially the INSIGHT I-325VM wasn't finalized until October 1991, though we have supported it for over a year. ATTENTION: Mac+ owners: A recently discovered "Mac+ only" problem involves running any of our SCSI installers written since version 1.1.2, and having at least one device that has its SCSI ID higher numbered than your system boot device's ID. On a Mac+, your computer may not boot unless you configure the highest number drive (as Apple infers) as being the boot device. Thus, if you bought a Syquest, and no system is on a cartridge, and it has a higher SCSI ID than your regular drive, and you have a Mac+, and the cartridge is inserted, and you are booting.... KABOOM. We'll try to fix it in a future version. NOTE ABOUT EDITING THE PARTITION VOLUME ICONS: As of 1.9.14 you must use RedEdit 2.1 or greater. ================================================================================= ================================================================================= Notes for professional version of SCSI Director ------------------------------------------ When partitioning a mounted device connected to a Nubus SCSI card, the user should always reboot the system after finishing with SCSI Director. Accessing any devices associated with the partitioned device before rebooting may result in the corruption of data on the device. This is because the NuBus card's driver is not supplied by SCSI Director and therefore cannot always be safely made aware of repartitioning done behind the NuBus Card's back. THEREFORE REBOOT AS SOON AS YOU ARE DONE RE-PARTITIONING OR AUTO-INSTALLING OVER A NUBUS SCSI CARD, AND ARE READY TO QUIT. ================================================================================= ================================================================================= Revisions to SCSI driver have been made, so update ALL your devices to get the latest version installed. "Installing" new SCSI drivers is a safe and quick process, though remember that installing a SCSI driver on a "Passworded" volume (passworded with a product OTHER THAN ours) is foolish unless you unpassword that "other" product first, before installing our SCSI driver. REMEMBER: When using our SCSI Driver software, doing get-info on a partition icon in the Finder is a way to tell which of our SCSI Driver version is INSTALLED on the device, BUT NOT WHICH ONE IS CONTROLLING the device. This is to allow you to recognize which of your disks need updating or not. (Driver version 4.4a0 is the latest version, and is included within the latest release). ========== End of file.