Rascsi tester. Uk

[atommat]

I’m looking for someone in the uk that has a working Mac plus that can help me with some hardware testing.

I have a rascsi connected to my recapped Mac plus. I can administer it, I can boot from it on the Mac and I’ve cross checked everything from cables to sdcards. but whenever I try to perform any kind of write to scsi, I get about ~30 seconds of transfer before the logs report errors and the system freezes up. floppy Is fine. This across every macOS and every conceivable permutation of anything that I have control over.

so there are one or two possible issues here. 1. The Mac plus Is screwy Or 2. A defective rascsi.

ive already checked the rascsi under the microscope and I found solder shavings between pins. I’ve cleaned those out but I think it may have been assembled badly by the supplier. I have run pin tests through the cable connections. Etc etc.

as I don’t have any other scsi kit to test with, I am looking for someone in the uk, with a Mac plus, with a known working scsi interface that I can send this rascsi to, to perform some Basic tests. I’m happy to to arrange all carriage and costs.

better still , if you are in south London, perhaps I can drop off or meet up.

if you can help, please get in touch.

m

 

[mg.man]

I'll be happy to help - but I'm not S.London, nearer Oxford. I'm also away next week, so there may be someone else who can assist sooner / nearer.

One question, how are you powering your RaSCSI? The Plus does not supply TERM(inator) power, so you should be using external power to the RaSCSI. There also may be a setting in the RaSCSI that sets it to supply its own TERM POWER. I'd check these before shipping it around.

PM me if you'd like me to help.

 

[Daniël]

One question, how are you powering your RaSCSI? The Plus does not supply TERM(inator) power, so you should be using external power to the RaSCSI. There also may be a setting in the RaSCSI that sets it to supply its own TERM POWER. I'd check these before shipping it around.

I don't think you can run the RaSCSI off termination power, the Pi itself draws more than I would think the TERMPWR can supply.

 

[atommat]

I have the rascsi board paired up with a rpi4. Im using usb C to the pi with a 80w supply so theres no voltage issues. The rascsi has a microusb but i have not powered that , should it be powered? ie, power to both the rascsi and the pi?

 

[mg.man]

I don't have one of these, so this is only a guess... The SCSI bus requires termination, and, as mentioned, the Plus does not provide TERMPWR (which pretty much every other Mac does). So, it might not be a bad idea to power the RaSCSI so that it can power the terminators (which I assume it has)? Yeah, quite a few guesses... maybe there is a RaSCSI expert on here who can clue us all in?

 

[mg.man]

Haven't found anything definitive w/r/t powering the RaSCSI, but I did find this
- https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/issues/40
What 'partitioning' s/w did you use to create your HD image?

Also, AmigaKit's picture of their RaSCSI shows a flying lead with a molex connector - which implies to me power is required?
- https://amigakit.amiga.store/rascsi-adapter-board-p-91280.html?currency=GBP

Finally... at the bottom of this - https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/wiki/Troubleshooting - there's mention of checking the logs for power issues...

Good luck!

 

[atommat]

Haven't found anything definitive w/r/t powering the RaSCSI, but I did find this
- https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/issues/40
What 'partitioning' s/w did you use to create your HD image?

Also, AmigaKit's picture of their RaSCSI shows a flying lead with a molex connector - which implies to me power is required?
- https://amigakit.amiga.store/rascsi-adapter-board-p-91280.html?currency=GBP

Finally... at the bottom of this - https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/wiki/Troubleshooting - there's mention of checking the logs for power issues...

Good luck!

Thanks for looking into this.

 

[mg.man]

Haven't found anything definitive w/r/t powering the RaSCSI

Just to close the loop on this... @atommat sent me his RaSCSI (which is working fine with a RaPi B+ / ethernet) and can confirm it's getting power from the RaPi... I'm even running the latest (Feb22) pre-built image from rascsi.com.

 

[atommat]

Thanks for you efforts.

 

[mg.man]

No worries! Gave me an opportunity to see what a RaSCSI is all about.

Starting to wonder, though... if your issue might be the funky way the Plus does SCSI... found the following:
- https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/issues/40

Before I pack it up and send back... I'll drag out my Plus and try it with the exact setup I used on my SE....

 

[atommat]

good idea. yeh i heard the mac plus is a bit of a scsi freak. look out in the log for the packet under run.

 

[mg.man]

Well... from the "it just worked" experience with the SE, to all manner of weird behaviour on the Plus...

I started off by booting into the 6.0.8 image included in the RaSCSI.com pre-built image, which seemed to work fine, so, it appeared things were looking good. Shutdown, connected my FloppyEMU, rebooted, and, crash as soon as I loaded a floppy image.

Thought, OK, let's try the FE in HD20 mode. Set that all up, powered up the Plus, and it proceeded to boot from the FE... of course, with no Startup Disk set, the HD20 will be accessed before the SCSI bus. Unfortunately, it crashed before the boot completed.

So... decided to try booting from the RaSCSI again... not happening - the failed boot from the FE had corrupted the RaSCSI 6.0.8 image. No problem, it was a generic one, so I can just unzip a fresh image. Powered back up, booted fine. So, let's try copying something from a real floppy. Insert floppy, loads fine, drag floppy icon to RaSCSI HD, warning about different disk types so floppy contents will go into a folder, no problem, hit OK, pop-up "no Coprocessor installed" -- eh?

At this point, I too am throwing in the towel. I don't know what's up with the way the Plus interacts with the RaSCSI, but there is definitely something weird going on..... sorry about that.

 

[atommat]

hahahaa, i share your frustration. i think the rascsi and the Plus are not meant for eachother.

thanks again