Apple III & Profile

From: Doug Spence <ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca>
Date: Wed Aug 12 02:46:48 1998

On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, Julian Richardson wrote:

> Hmm, well I don't know about Prodos or the 'catalyst' proggy that people are
> mentioning, I know I managed to get directory listings from my drives without
> either, although it *may* have been using a diagnostics disk that came with
> the drive.

That's what I thought. I don't have Prodos or catalyst, but the SOS
utilities disk with the drivers and setup programs seems to indicate that
I should be able to access the drive without anything fancy.

> From what I remember you're correct in waiting for the ready light to go
> out - the Profile does a block-by-block check of the drive each time you
> switch it on, so the fact that the ready light's blinking and then
> stopping is a good sign.

The READY light doesn't go out, it just stops blinking. It stays *on*. I
hope I didn't imply otherwise in my original post, else that could be a
source for confusion.

It makes sense to me that the READY light would stay on when the drive is
ready.

>> Also, I've got two Profile controllers, one in slot 3 and one in slot 4.
>> I coulfn't get it to work at all from the one in slot 3, simply because it
>> seems to have been preconfigured to look at slot 4.
>
> aha, has anyone ever tried this? I've got two profile drives but have
> never managed to get both to work at once, only one's ever recognised.
> Will the system support two drives at once (I can't remember if my
> problem was being unable to get anything working in a slot different
> from 4, or whether it was just that two controller cards didn't want to
> work in the same machine)

I played with it again, and I CAN get it to run from slot 3. But I have
to use the Profile controller board that was originally in slot 4, into
slot 3. Only one of the controller cards gets a response from the drive,
so I guess one is dead.

As is the drive, perhaps. I attempted to format the drive tonight, and I
got the error "Format error #21. Internal program error.". I'm hoping
it's a software error, but if it's hardware there's likely little I can do
about it.

Unless the cabling is wrong. :) I'm using a straight-through 25-pin
cable, and it's 6 feet long. Maybe the Profile doesn't like cables longer
than a foot in length or something? Or maybe it's supposed to have
different wiring?

The reason I say that the drive may not be replacable is that although
it's an ST-506, the board on the bottom is (c)1981 Apple Computer Inc. So
Apple has gone and customized it somehow. :/

> cheers
>
> Jules.

Thanks Jules, you're the only one not to try to involve Prodos so far. ;)


Doug Spence
ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
Received on Wed Aug 12 1998 - 02:46:48 BST

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