Adaptec 1502 - SCSI Hard Drive Question

Jerome Fine replies: Well, I am not saying that the files I received with the Iomega Zip drive don't work with that drive - in actual fact over the last 3 years they have worked extremely well in the W95 environment I use them with. In particular, with the Zip drive, I can access all three RT-11 partitions under E11, but on an actual real PDP-11 with a CQD 220/TM, for some reason, I can see only the first two. This is no longer a problem since I now also have the Sony drives on both the PC and the PDP-11. Since each MO disk has 8.75 RT-11 partitions on each side (that both the PC and the PDP-11 can see at all times - although the write speed of the MO disks is a bit slow), I use the MO when I want to transfer anything. However, based on your appraisal of Iomega software, I would, at the very least say that the Iomega programs are able to handle ONLY what they are designed for and very little more. So it is very pleasing that the Iomega device drivers and other stuff can even handle the Sony SMO S-501 drives correctly. The fact that I must fool the Iomega programs to see the SCSI hard drives is, I guess, fortunate to say the least. BUT, at least I have found it can be done. By the way, if you are able to read this whole reply, I will sprinkle my actual questions all the way through. Normally, I run with the Zip drive off (99% of the time - I just hardly use it any more and if when I migrate to the new PC I must leave it behind, I will only have to transfer about a dozen Zip 100 MByte disks to the Sony MO disks to carry everything along - but it would be nice to have the Zip for the ability to share files with others who still have that media with RT-11 software - probably less than 5 people). The Sony drives are OFF 90% of the time and ON only when they are being used - at boot time naturally and when I want to save files from a RAM disk, i.e. when I run RT-11 under E11, I can MOUNT DU2: SCSI2: to bring on-line for E11 (and RT-11) the Sony drive at SCSI2:, but I can also MOUNT DU7: RAM:/SIZE:33554432 which is where I work from all of the time, i.e. I run E11 with the Sony drives OFF and only turn them ON about once every 2 hours when I have a newer version of the program that I want to save. QUESTION: In your opinion, which does less damage - turning the Sony drives on for 5 minutes every two hours or leaving them on all of the time while I am working on RT-11 for an average of 6 hours for each RT-11 session? i.e. leave the Sony drives ON for about 6 hours or turn them on 4 times for 5 minutes each when they are actually being used? Anyone else have an opinion on how an external drive with its own power supply is best used - keep it on for 6 hours or only on for 4 sessions of 5 minutes each? Apology - my son #3 just returned his borrowed version of the host adapter (I only needed one of the two I had) and it is a 1502 - specifically AVA 1502 | SB (there was a vertical bar after the two - not a one) 984700 D 9745 with a serial number of BG0C7452C0H Made in Singapore By the way, I have "fixed" all the other incorrect references to 1510 and changed them to 1502 except in this section. OK - now can you e-mail me the ADAPTEC drivers that I should be using? No support obligations on your part - I will first try them with a backup ESDI hard drive and see if I can still do everything I can do now with the Zip drive, but still be able to use the SCSI hard drives without first having to have either the Sony or the SCSI drives powered on when I boot W95. I currently have the Adaptec host adapters: AHA-2940AU 984300-01 B 9706 which I presume is an ISA and AHA-1535A 947000-01 C 9637 which I presume is PCI I just realized that perhaps even the original 1502 may also be OK, but the only problem is the Iomega device drivers. So if it is best that I continue with the 1502, that will be OK since the new motherboard for the Pentium III 800 has ISA and PCI slots. But if I can't boot a SCSI drive with the 1502 and I can do so with either the 2940AU or the 1535A, that would probably be a valuable addition in return for not being able to use the Zip drive - or at the very least not being able to easily WRITE PROTECT the media as I can do now - just right click on the Zip drive in Explorer and select the correct item in the menu. A bootable drive would be great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But how would I boot? I normally run the Zip at SCSI ID=6 and would never boot from it in any case. The three Sony drives are run at SCSI ID=0,1,2 I see on the 1502 there is a J21 with 5 pairs of jumpers - I have no idea how mine is set. On the 2940, I can't see any way to set up the CSR address. On the 1535A, I see an S1 with 4 dip switches. I find the throughput on the 1502 quite satisfactory. When I use the ST 32550N SCSI hard drive, I can read or write a 32 MByte RT-11 partition in about 30 seconds or less as compared with the same 32 MBytes on the Sony and taking about 250 seconds to read and about 500 seconds to write. But since I do all 32 MBytes rarely, I don't consider it a problem. Most of the time, I am writing only the source and listing files at one time - less than 1 MByte total. So a few seconds one way or the other does not matter. This would be IDEAL!!!!!!! Right now, I must boot with every SCSI ID that I will want to use powered on as a removable drive. Will that also work with W98? When I switch to the Pentium III 800, I will almost certainly switch to W98 and Netscape 4.78, but dump everything else I have including the games that my granddaughter used to play with when she was 3 years old and no longer uses now that she is 6 years old. I may want to have better sound software that can use MP3 stuff, but that is not a priority. Usually I find I can't concentrate well enough if the sound is too loud in the background. As I have said, I now rarely use the Iomega Zip drive, but the one thing that would be "Nice" to retain is the ability to WRITE PROTECT the media which right now I can do ONLY on the PC. When I do that, RT-11 on the real PDP-11 can no longer WRITE to that media - which is a "Nice" feature, but not really very useful or important since I don't use the Zip drive enough to justify all that bother for that one feature. I would just UNPROTECT all the Zip media I have right now (only about 10 at the most) and transfer everything to the Sony media just in case. That seems like a good suggestion. Can you e-mail me the Adaptec driver for the 1502 host adapter I am using? Plus a few helpful hints? Please realize I am a PC dummy - I just don't want to spend the time to learn Windows. I am 63 now and I know RT-11 very well, but that is where I want to spend my time. So I will likely continue to use the PC only for e-mail (internet access in general) and especially to run RT-11 under the E11 emulator. Skip the following if you are not interested in what I did 10 years ago! Right now I have the Sony SMO S-501 drives which are the original that Sony released about ten years ago. In fact, that is how I started. At the time, a customer NEEDED a better way of backup for his RX02 8" floppy disks. There were about 1500 floppies using an RL02 as the backup - 20 * 8" floppies of 1/2 Mbyte each on a 10 Mbyte RL02 for a total of about 75 RL02 disks - or about 3 very large cabinets. Since there were 5 natural groups of about 15 RL02 disk packs each, the Sony media with 295 MBytes per side or about 8.75 RT-11 partitions was VERY sufficient to hold those 15 * RL02 disks worth of files on 5 RT-11 partitions. This 5 sides of media on 3 disks was then sufficient to hold the same information as 75 RL02 disks. And then there was the REQUIREMENT for 2 off-side backups. Originally, the 75 RL02 disks each had two tape backups off-site. Or about two more cabinets of storage. Now, all NINE MO media (one primary copy and 2 backup copies) were the total size of a loaf of bread and could be held in one small box less than the total volume of one RL02 disk. Eventually, ONE partition was needed for a VMS directory structure when a VMS/VAX system was also required to be able to share the backup. That hard part in that case was to generated (very carefully) a file structure in VMS in the first 32 MBytes of the MO media (RT-11 partition zero) seven contiguous VMS files which exactly overlaid each of the other RT-11 partitions - not difficult in principle, but impossible in practise since VMS does NOT allow the user to specify where files are placed. I set up an RT-11 system right beside the VMS/VAX system with its own Sony drive. By fooling VMS (in RT-11 I can easily look at any block on the media and I simply found out where the VMS free block list was located - and zeroed out all the blocks except one 65536 block set that were at the same location as an RT-11 partition - actually it was not simple and the whole exercise took 3 days to figure out and do the job), I was able to allocate 7 contiguous VMS files which could be MOUNTed in Exchange under VMS and provide access, in turn, to each RT-11 partition. The problem in Exchange in VMS was that if the whole 295 MByte media was MOUNTed as a foreign volume, ONLY RT-11 partition zero was available - there was NO parameter in VMS Exchange to say which RT-11 partition was desired. I see the drives on eBay and have purchased a few along with more than 100 media that were about to be tossed. For RT-11 which still breaks everything up into 32 MByte partitions like V3.2 of MS-DOS did, these Sony drives and media of 295 MBytes per side (8.75 RT-11 partitions) are really ideal. I can backup an ST32550N on just 4 media which is probably just about all the RT-11 files I will ever have - well, it might be double or even triple that if I count all the duplicates, but definitely not ten times. OK - some more definitions. I now will use about 5 of the ST32550N drives to perform a backup of all of the files on my 1.2 GByte ESDI hard drive that I use under W95. A grandfaher/father/son rotation should provide adequate protection if I do that every other day and also leave 2 for the end of month. The other drives I will begin to use under RT-11 as the primary source instead of having to load from the MO media every time. So gradually (until I get the newer W98 system with the Pentium III 800 and 30 GByte dual IDE drives up and running in the next year or two), I will switch to using the ST32550N drives as backup in W95 and primary plus backup in RT-11. Can you use any ST32550N drives? They were originally in an AlphaServer as a RAID - about 18 drives in the AlphaServer. If anyone else is reading this, perhaps you can add to the discussion. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine