Using a SiliconGraphics SCSI 3,5" floppy with Amiga

[FerryA1]

I recently got a SGI external SCSI floppy unit, and I wanted to try it with my A1200/060/SCSI:

I thought it would be as simple as making a proper dosdriver with the floppy geometry and pointing to the SCSI device, but looks like it isn't the case: I can format DD and HD PC floppies on Amiga units, copy data to them and read from them, but if I try to read them from the SGI unit, it sees the disks, it sees the files in the disk and it can read their contents, but the data it reads looks truncated, chopped.

Looking for info on that unit, I found a German forum where a user here, @attic636, says it has or had one, but also says he could not make it work in his A1200/B1230IV/SCSI. If you read this, did you finally made it work?

Then yesterday I found this on Aminet:

driver/media/TSFSuite​

Looks like the unit has to format the disk first as a SCSI unit, as if you were doing a partitioning, and then format that partition, the full disk, with the desired floppy geometry, be it Amiga FFS or PC FAT format. The author says the unit will not accept disks not formatted that way, and that makes very little sense to me when it comes to usability: will another non-SGI system, i.e. an Amiga, a PC, be able to read those weirdly-formatted disks, and the other way round?

I'll try it tonight or tomorrow, I'll inform back if it works.

Saluditos,

Ferrán.

 

[attic636]

Hi,
ah yes, that old TSFSuite. I can tell you I gave up on it and the idea of using an ancient huge SGI SCSI
floppy. And I'm not a programmer. Basically, the idea was that I wanted to exchange data between Amiga and
PC using 1.44 MB fomatted disks, however my good old universal Chinon FZ-352A drive did not work anymore.

In the meantime, I found a solution. A LS-120 floppy drive for both 1.44 MB and LS-120 MB disks.
Usually, these drives are IDE only, but I had discovered a rare SCSI on ebay.ca (Canada) last year.
There are still some available:
LKM-FC34-5 WINSTATION Super Disk Drive SCSI Floppy Drive WFS2C2B2, new old stock

LKM-FC34-5 WINSTATION Super Disk Drive SCSI Floppy Drive WFS2C2B2 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for LKM-FC34-5 WINSTATION Super Disk Drive SCSI Floppy Drive WFS2C2B2 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Pros and cons
Pros:
- It is recognized properly by my B1230 IV SCSI card
- 1.44 MB formatted floppy disks work well, they are being read calm and smoothly
(the read/write head works with laser supported precision), even old disks that
show read/write errors on my PC. Good for data recovery from old PC floppy disks.
- Inserted 1.44 MB disks show up on WB automatically, as we know it from Amiga
disks and disappear when you eject them. (CrossDOS should be installed, of course)

Cons:
- Does not read Amiga FFS formatted DD and HD floppy disks. WB shows them as
unknown volume and will suggest to format. So, only 1.44 MB format with CrossDos would
make sense, but i had not tried out to re-format a FFS disk.
I guess, FAT format for 1.44 MB HD disks is hardwired in all LS-120 floppy drives.
Surely, like PC mainboards have a floppy controller chip, that only knows FAT.
- The eject button won't work mechanically. When no power available and you still insert
a disk and want to get it back, there is a hole for "eject" by paper-clip though.
Ejecting disks works by either pressing the eject-button, when system is on.
Or by SCSI ommand. You can install any SCSI eject tool from Aminet e.g. for CD-trays and provide
SCSI device and Unit no. in the tooltypes. e.g. S_Eject 14.lha which presents an Load(Eject button on WB
(CD-in load won't work and you sometimes need a 2nd mouse-click to eject your disk from
the LS-120 drive)

- It is hard to find a proper drive bay, because LS-120 drives are slimline 3.5" half height - while
thsi WinStation LS-120 drive even needs more internal space, due to its SCSI adapter board
which is mounted below.
workaround: I had found this 5.25" drive bay. It also has some space for a slim-line CD/DVD. drive
above.
Intel AXXCDUSBFDBRK 5.25" Slim-Line Optical/Floppy Kit

Pardon Our Interruption...

The Winstation LKM-FC34-5 super disk drive fits well inside, when you remove all internal mounting parts.
So, you will have to be creative to mount the LS-120 drive, that it won't slip around in the drive bay.
But it does fit inside.

I did not get to test LS-120 MB floppy disks in this WinStation SCSI FDD yet.
But chances are quite well, that FAT filesystem is only mandatory for normal 1.44 MB HD disks for
backwards compatibility to standard PC floppy drives/controllers which only know FAT
as the one and only file-system.
So, I think it should be possible to format and a LS-120 MB disk in Amiga FFS, too.
This means, if LS-120 MB floppy disks behave like normal removable hard-disks.

However, I cannot tell, when I will have time to test my LS-120 SCSI drive with 120MB disks, because I have
had a defective IDE harddisk recently and I will have to set-up my WB and all programs on CF-card next time.

Okay, so much for now. I also look forward to read on your further progress with that SGI-workstation drive.
Good luck.

 

[FerryA1]

Hi,
ah yes, that old TSFSuite. I can tell you I gave up on it and the idea of using an ancient huge SGI SCSI
floppy. And I'm not a programmer. Basically, the idea was that I wanted to exchange data between Amiga and
PC using 1.44 MB fomatted disks, however my good old universal Chinon FZ-352A drive did not work anymore.

Oh, I was just curious about the device, I never saw a SCSI floppy drive before. I have a Dell HD external floppy for Amiga, it works just fine with both Amiga and PC floppies, both DD and HD, and detects disk change automatically, so not really a need for me.

Regarding the SGI unit, I've managed to read and write data to both HD and DD floppies, but it's a pain in the ass, since you must send a "diskchange" at every action you do with it. Should you forget a diskchange, errors will appear.

Since it was a unit made specifically for SGI, I guess its drivers were simply more polished and can access disks in the unit with no need to weird "scsi disk formatting" and then a filesystem formatting, even if it is a quick one. I've seen a video at YT of the unit working with a SGI system, and it does flawlessly, accepting disks formatted in other systems (PC, Mac), doing automatic diskchange…

Okay, so much for now. I also look forward to read on your further progress with that SGI-workstation drive.
Good luck.

Thanks for the info about thr LS-120.

And for the SGI unit, as I said, not much to do with it. In my previous message I already commented that I thought it would be as easy as setting up a mountlist with the proper info pointing to the scsi device (1230scsi.device), but no, not the case, not that easy, and using TFTSuite does not make it any better, quite the opposite, too difficult to be interesting or productive.

Anyway, it was fun trying

I think I'll end up selling it.

Saluditos,

Ferrán.