Toaster Flyer - proprietary drives?

[Gavin Scott]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 11:17 AM Jules Richardson via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> The big question is whether in a Flyer environment the drives run custom
> microcode or will have been LLFed to something other than a "standard" 512
> byte block size - I believe that the Flyer was really pushing the
> boundaries of what was possible when it was current, and the majority of
> drives on the market just didn't have the necessary throughput (I see a
> "Newtek approved" sticker on one of the Seagates). I know that the storage
> was considered "proprietary", but I don't know if that just means that the
> filesystem was Flyer-specific (i.e. not AFFS), or if there was more to it
> than that.

Have you been through the old Flyer forums at:

https://forums.newtek.com/forumdisplay.php/101-Amiga-Video-Toaster-Flyer-FAQ-s/

the FAQ posts and the sub-forums there for the Flyer look like they
contain lots of hints at least, like:

https://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php/6258-Does-the-Flyer-Work-With-Current-SCSI-Drives

"Platforms: 2000 3000 3000T 4000 4000T

Yes, the Flyer will work with most current SCSI drives. The Flyer's
minimum requirement is for SCSI-2 Fast hard drives, since the Flyer
uses SCSI-2 Fast controllers. Current generation drives will negotiate
with the host controller to which they are attached, to discover what
mode the controller itself uses. The drive will then adjust to operate
as though it were just a SCSI-2 Fast hard drive." [...]

etc.