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daisy.txt
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1995-04-25
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9KB
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159 lines
A lot of people don't understand how easy it is to add additional hard
drives to their systems, so allow me to fill you in on the scoop. You may
not believe it when you first understand just what I'm saying; I didn't when
I first heard it. It's so simple it's a little unreal that it works. And
this also works for other SCSI drives, like CD-ROMs and tape drives.
I'll give you step-by-step directions, so make a capture buffer of this for
later use. Make sure to read all the way through it first, of course, so you
can jot down any parts you might need. This might sound a bit complicated,
but it's really not, and it's actually kind of fun.
Let me first just visualize it for you: You have a wide SCSI cable that
runs from your controller to the hard drive. Clamp this little splitter bar
across it, and run another cable from the first cable to the second hard
drive. That's it! Told you ya wouldn't believe it.
Unless the power supply of your system supports more than one drive, you
will have to pick up an additional power supply, but a decent one's not
expensive. They have a $35 special over at Weird Stuff that's terrific; well
made, nice fan, runs four drives. I think Haltek (Halsted?) also has them.
I have two controllers, a DataFlyer and an GVP, and the following works for
both of them, so unless you've got something really odd, it should work for
you, too. Your controller may have a smaller-sized jack on the back, but
that's not the one we want. You can use it, but you'll have to go through
some cable conversions. We want the 50-pin one inside the controller. If
your controller has a 50-pin outlet on the back, good, use that.
The way the computer keeps them apart is by their UNIT number, the number
you see in the mountlist. If you don't have a mountlist because you
<shudder> "auto-boot", use whatever program you have to address the second
drive so you can change its UNIT number.
You tell the drive itself that it's now a different unit number by moving
or adding those little jumper blocks on the back of the drive, but we'll get
to that.
Tools Required:
We're gonna yank open the controller, so look to see what it needs.
Probably either a small Phillips screwdriver, or one of them #10 5-point
jobbies, available at Orchard.
Before you do anything else, make a fresh copy of your controller's Install
disk. We'll want that for the new drive.
Parts Required:
-Jumper block for back of drive, might have a spare already on it.
-For two drives, a SCSI "daisy-chain" cable, available at Fry's.
-For more than two drives, you'll not only need additional daisy cables, but
since the cables are all female ends, you're going to need one (or more) of
the male-male converters. Okay, you know the difference between a male and
a female jack, right? If not, ask your Sex Ed teacher. The male's the one
with the prongs, the female's the one the male plugs into. Heh, so far, so
good. It helps to draw up a little "cable schematic" so you'll know where
you need male or female ends.
Let's just talk about adding one drive to your present drive; I'll talk
about adding additional drives at the end.
So, the only part you should need is the daisy-chain SCSI cable. There are
different lengths, 18" generally being the longest.
Pop open the controller and look at the SCSI jack where it plugs into the
controller. Note whether the notch on the SCSI cable is facing up or down,
and take a pencil and write "notch up" or "notch down" somewhere inside the
controller. The hard drive will most likely have a corresponding notch for
the cable, but the controllers usually don't. They might have a little "1"
at one end of the circuit board, signifying the #1 wire of the cable, the
colored one. Either way, scribble down the pencil thing, and mark the wire,
too, if you want.
Now, the first thing we've got to do is have the controller recognize the
new hard drive by a different UNIT number. You control this on the hard
drive's end with the jumper blocks, and on the computer's end with the
mountlist. We're assuming your present hard drive is UNIT 0. Go check the
mountlist or your SCSI bus program to make sure. If for some odd reason it's
UNIT 1, then we'll make the new drive UNIT 2. It'll still be "dh1:", we're
talking about UNIT numbers here, not device names.
Look at the back of the hard drive, at the little jumper block pins.
There might be a spare jumper block already on one of them. Some drives,
like the Maxtor, have a motor-drive jumper block, which must stay on where it
is. It's on the side closest to the edge. That's also where, on a different
make, like a SeaGate, the spare might be. Easy enough to test: plug the
power supply into the new drive and fire it up. Everything spin normally?
Kill the juice, yank off the jumper block, fire it up again. If it doesn't
spin, put the jumper back. If it sounds right, there's your spare.
Now let's make sure the drive can be recognized as its default UNIT 0.
Except for a motor-drive jumper block, if it needs one, there shouldn't be
any jumpers on the drive, unless they're to the side, next to the SCSI jumper
pins. Plug the SCSI cable into the back of the drive and fire up the
controller's Install disk and the power supply. Run the install program and
it should find the drive. If not, then you got other problems, and you'll
have to solve things before getting back to this point.
Okay, the next step is to have the Install program recognize the drive as
UNIT 1. Now, you can't hurt anything by putting the jumper block in
different places, so unless you know which two pins the jumper goes on, take
a wild guess and jam it on. Fire up the controller disk and see if it
recognizes the drive, and as what unit. If it's not UNIT 1, doesn't make any
big dif (as long as it's not UNIT 0, that's already taken), but we're trying
to do this right, so cut all the power and try the jumper block in another
position. Keep notes for future reference, maybe on the inside of the
controller manual. When the controller boot disk recognizes it as UNIT 1,
you did it. If you can't find the UNIT 1 position, don't worry, just use any
position but UNIT 0. If the controller just insists on reading it as UNIT 0,
no matter what position the jumper is in, doesn't matter, just leave it as 0
and make your other drive a different UNIT number. No need to reformat, just
move the jumper block and change the Mountlist.
Okay, we're almost there. Run the install program, and run through the
routine until the new drive's formatted and mounted. It'll write the new
mountlist, and you'll see it says UNIT = 1. Make sure it says "DH1:" at the
top. Some controllers, like my DataFlyer, like to misname it. People tend to
think of device names as permanent, but they're not. If you want to name
the drive DH9: or Pixie:, this is where to do it. Then just "Mount Pixie:"
instead of "Mount dh1:". Pardon my lewdness.
Next, you'll want to copy the new drive's mountlist to your regular boot-up
mountlist. Do that however you want. Don't forget to copy the new drive's
mountlist to both your floppy's mountlist and your hard drive's. If you're
auto-booting, things should take care of themselves.
Okay, now for the test. Unhook the SCSI cable from the controller and the
drive and toss it in a drawer somewhere. Hook the two drives up to the
daisy-chain cable. Power supply hooked up to both? Fire up the Workbench
and mount the new drive. It should fire right up, and you'll probably want
to include the new Mount line in your startup-seq. If auto-booting, look on
the Workbench screen for the icon. :)
Except for the actual physical placement of the drives, that's it, and
where the drives go is up to you. If the whine from two drives (and possibly
an additional power supply) is too much, make a capture buff of my textfile
on building a custom "muffler box", then build it. If you're not into tools,
well, good, this'll be a nice simple project for you to start growing up.
Well, that should do it. Make sure to give a holler in the ol' Base if ya
got probs. I'm no "expert" on the subject, but we might be able to work
things out. The main thing is trying it first as UNIT 0. If it's recognized
at that point, then you're home free. Just a matter of playing with the
jumper blocks until it's a different UNIT number. Good luck!
TBM
%Z