-----Original Message-----
From: Holm Tiffe [mailto:holm at freibergnet.de]
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 1:09 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: SyQuest Drives - 200 vs 88
Jason T wrote:
On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 1:02 AM, Tom Gardner
<tom94022 at comcast.net>
wrote:
<snip>
> Interestingly, while Windows sees the drive as a
5200C both with no
> cartridge loaded and with the 200mb cartridge loaded, it suddenly sees
> it as a 5110 with the 88mb cart in. Clever firmware, changing its
> identity according to the capacity of the media.
>
<snip>
Hmm, had such a firmware ages before in a dying IBM 0663 disk, if it
startetd correctly, it was a IBM 0663, if it failed, it was a Western
Digital Drive :-)
I think parts of the firmware where overridden from firmware extensions on
the drive itself.
Regards,
Holm
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As I recall SyQuest had to provide a driver and bios to make its removable
media SCSI drive bootable and have DOS safely deal with removability. With
one's own driver then tricks like changing identity are possible.
I'd speculate that in the IBM case, also a SCSI drive, the IBM driver
unloaded after failure and something in the OS defaulted to WD.
The IBM 0663 was contemporaneous to the SyQuest 5110, circa the early 1990s
Tom