cheesestraws
Well-known member
Results will be incoming hopefully tonight or tomorrow. This has taken longer than I intended 
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Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Looking for anyone who has a Zulu SCSI and Quadra 700
- Thread starter macuserman
- Start date
cheesestraws
Well-known member
So, @macuserman, I did some (rather tedious) SCIENCE:
Method:
.
Initial results:
The spinner and the scsi2sd always produced a bootable installation. The ZuluSCSI never did. B-7.1 repeatably crashes at Welcome to Macintosh, B-7.5.3 says 'The system file is damaged' and will not boot further.
Follow-on results:
Is it the disc driver? One test only each—Formatted with SCSI Director Pro and whatever version of Lido was hanging around on the file server. Neither produced improvement, though the resulting crashes were different.
Is it the machine? Tested twice with the same ZuluSCSI and the same SD card on a Quadra 610, installing the same B-7.5.3 image from the same server in the same way. Worked fine.
tl;dr: There is definitely something funny in the interaction with the ZuluSCSI and the Q700. I don't know what, but it's not just you.
Why do I do this kind of thing to myself? I don't know, either.
Method:
- Take a 1G drive
- Delete all partitions, including driver partition from it using HD SC Setup. Reinitialise the drive.
- Install System B-7.1 over the network.
- See if the resulting system works.
- Install B-7.5.3.
- See if the resulting system works.
.Initial results:
The spinner and the scsi2sd always produced a bootable installation. The ZuluSCSI never did. B-7.1 repeatably crashes at Welcome to Macintosh, B-7.5.3 says 'The system file is damaged' and will not boot further.
Follow-on results:
Is it the disc driver? One test only each—Formatted with SCSI Director Pro and whatever version of Lido was hanging around on the file server. Neither produced improvement, though the resulting crashes were different.
Is it the machine? Tested twice with the same ZuluSCSI and the same SD card on a Quadra 610, installing the same B-7.5.3 image from the same server in the same way. Worked fine.
tl;dr: There is definitely something funny in the interaction with the ZuluSCSI and the Q700. I don't know what, but it's not just you.
Why do I do this kind of thing to myself? I don't know, either.
macuserman
Well-known member
@cheesestraws Oh man! Thank you so much for these results, I truly know your pain with how much fun this is to test. I'm incredibly grateful, I owe you one for sure! I've no idea what the deal is with the Q700 and the Zulu but it seems you have confirmed that specifically that model doesn't like the Zulu. If I could hunt down a SCSI2SD I'd just go with that but as they are out of stock it's a bit of a pain. I'll reach out to rabbit hole again with this new data and perhaps he can work on a solution.
Once again incredibly grateful I know I said it already but I've spent hours and hours, many many evenings since I got this Zulu wondering if I was crazy lol. It's nice to know while I probably am crazy, at least I'm not losing my mind on this particular issue.
Once again incredibly grateful I know I said it already but I've spent hours and hours, many many evenings since I got this Zulu wondering if I was crazy lol. It's nice to know while I probably am crazy, at least I'm not losing my mind on this particular issue.
cheesestraws
Well-known member
You're very welcome!
I was just having a chat with @jessenator about this and he was saying that he'd had a lot of temperamentalness on the Q700 SCSI bus in general, not connected with the ZuluSCSI. I don't know if that's relevant, but the 700 may just have sketchy SCSI for some reason. (Sorry, I don't know SCSI at a low enough level to speculate about causes.
I was just having a chat with @jessenator about this and he was saying that he'd had a lot of temperamentalness on the Q700 SCSI bus in general, not connected with the ZuluSCSI. I don't know if that's relevant, but the 700 may just have sketchy SCSI for some reason. (Sorry, I don't know SCSI at a low enough level to speculate about causes.
jessenator
Well-known member
From my experience with the Quadra 700, the SCSI implementation is …not like other Quadras I've used. I can't go into deep testing detail like @cheesestraws did, since my 700 is with a new owner. I will say that I had similar frustrations. A SCSI2SD worked flawlessly while an STM32-based SCSI solution was a bit more troublesome. I'm struggling to even remember what utility I ended up using, but I likely used FWB Tools Lite.
It could also be that went full chaotic good and put 8.1 on it, because that's what I prefer, and might have then used whichever version of Drive Setup etc. that was on that media.
Also, something I ran into constantly is termination issues. Some bit of minutia on this point, but the Service Source docs for the 700 indicates that models which didn't ship with an internal HDD ( w a t ) came with a terminator in the logic board connector.
According to the dev note it says an "improved" SCSI implementation was used (and it differs from the 9xx), but this may just be "improved" over the II series.
Again, I can't say for certain, but my experience, but the STM32 SCSI solutions seem to have wonky termination. Again, anecdotes here, but I can only speak to my experience. And this just leads me to also hold that in a vanilla setup, these STM32 SCSI replacements and the Quadra 700's SCSI just don't play nice together.
I had issues when using an STM32 SCSI solution in conjunction with external SCSI devices as well; e.g. a Bernoulli drive as well as an external CD-ROM. It was no-go, while using the aged spinning HDD yielded no problems.
FWIW I've had nothing but success in my Wombat-based Quadras, and even in the 030 Macs I've used them in.
It could also be that went full chaotic good and put 8.1 on it, because that's what I prefer, and might have then used whichever version of Drive Setup etc. that was on that media.
Also, something I ran into constantly is termination issues. Some bit of minutia on this point, but the Service Source docs for the 700 indicates that models which didn't ship with an internal HDD ( w a t ) came with a terminator in the logic board connector.
According to the dev note it says an "improved" SCSI implementation was used (and it differs from the 9xx), but this may just be "improved" over the II series.
Again, I can't say for certain, but my experience, but the STM32 SCSI solutions seem to have wonky termination. Again, anecdotes here, but I can only speak to my experience. And this just leads me to also hold that in a vanilla setup, these STM32 SCSI replacements and the Quadra 700's SCSI just don't play nice together.
I had issues when using an STM32 SCSI solution in conjunction with external SCSI devices as well; e.g. a Bernoulli drive as well as an external CD-ROM. It was no-go, while using the aged spinning HDD yielded no problems.
FWIW I've had nothing but success in my Wombat-based Quadras, and even in the 030 Macs I've used them in.
erichelgeson
Well-known member
Thats strange - I use my STM32 based device(BlueSCSI) in my Quadra 700 (as well I know a few others who do) without issue. If you have a specific issue would love to know more or see the image - some of the older blanks/images that were commonly shared had driver and other issues which have been resolved with Disk Jockey.
Also the GD32 is a STM32 based clone chip - so zulu is STM32 based.
cheesestraws
Well-known member
Let's keep the passive-aggressive bullshit cross-vendor SCSI drama to other forums where it's oddly welcome, shall we, Eric?
xodium
New member
FWIW, my first brush with any SCSI-replacement devices was actually a BlueSCSI 1.0c for my Quadra 700 because the 1GB drive in it gave up. The only quirk I noticed was that sometimes (very rarely) the BlueSCSI would not be "ready" in time for the boot process, but a quick power cycle fixed it. That was on REALLY old firmware though, it might have been fixed by now.
I no longer have the Q700, but I can say the ZuluSCSI has had...some interesting interactions with some of my Macs. Works fine on my LC475, for example, but throws a fit on most Power Macs I try it with (6500, 9600, beige G3). You can try disabling synchronus SCSI to see if it fixes it (gotta have a zuluscsi.ini, which can be grabbed from the ZuluSCSI Firmware GitHub) and setting MaxSyncSpeed to 0, that's what got it working on the Macs it was having an issue with. Hoping a better fix is in the cards, hopeful that it is. (I've filed a bug against it on GH and they're working on it, it looks)
I no longer have the Q700, but I can say the ZuluSCSI has had...some interesting interactions with some of my Macs. Works fine on my LC475, for example, but throws a fit on most Power Macs I try it with (6500, 9600, beige G3). You can try disabling synchronus SCSI to see if it fixes it (gotta have a zuluscsi.ini, which can be grabbed from the ZuluSCSI Firmware GitHub) and setting MaxSyncSpeed to 0, that's what got it working on the Macs it was having an issue with. Hoping a better fix is in the cards, hopeful that it is. (I've filed a bug against it on GH and they're working on it, it looks)
erichelgeson
Well-known member
No drama, honestly wondering if there was an issue since it was mentioned and I haven't experienced it - I would like to know, can DM me the details to avoid cluttering the thread if you'd like @jessenator
jessenator
Well-known member
Did I mention your product? No.
Was I using your product? Not that it's any of your business, but no, I was not.
Was I using your competitor's product? Again, not that it's any of your business, but no, I was not.
Did I compare (apples to apple) your product to a competitors? No. (SCSI2SD predates this branch of solutions and was mentioned simply because it encompasses my experience)
Do I have a vested interest in any company who peddles their wares here? Absolutely not.
Do I have any interest at all in whatever behind-the-scenes bullshit is going on between your companies? Absolutely not.
Did I qualify my experience as being experiential and anecdotal in nature? Yes.
Is this the end of this petty discussion? Yes.
*clarity to the point of what I was using: I used a third party's design of a board with a bluepill I purchased ages ago using firmware downloaded when it was permissible to do so.
erichelgeson
Well-known member
Sounds good, I was honestly curious but if it was some other project thats good to know, thanks.
erichelgeson
Well-known member
Gah wish I could edit my post as I didnt see this - it has always been and will always be permissible to download the firmware. If you do have any issues related to the firmware regardless of hardware please let me know.
Tarantulas
Well-known member
For the record, the “Comedy Rule of Threes” is:
1) Serious thing
2) Second, and potentially more serious thing
3) Funny third thing
The intenal connector on the IIfx is meant to be terminated as well, if an internal drive is not installed, but I've never had to do that.
Now, with my Q700, the behaviour it exhibits, not with ZuluSCSI but with SCSI2SD is different to every other Mac I've used. With an internal SCSI2SD connected, and an external SCSI2SD connected, the volume on the internal one is unmounted, and it does this every time the external one is plugged in. No other Mac has done this to me. Both devices are terminated and on their own IDs, so there's no reason that should happen that I know of. It might be completely unrelated to what's happening with the ZuluSCSI, but still.
As far as I know, @rabbitholecomputing do not provide official support for ZuluSCSI on the forum - so @macuserman is probably best off creating a ticket here https://github.com/ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware/issues where they can look into what might be causing this behaviour.
ZuluSCSI does have various config options, perhaps one of those can help or lead to what is happening when it's used with a Q700.
Example config file here:
ZuluSCSI-firmware/zuluscsi.ini at main · ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware
Firmware for the ZuluSCSI advanced SCSI emulator. Contribute to ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Phipli
Well-known member
My 475 is doing that - if I boot from an external CD drive the internal disk doesn't mount. Fine otherwise. I haven't investigated it yet and was just assuming I had something set wrong on the disk making it marginal.
Juror22
Well-known member
EnableSCSI2 = 1 # Enable faster speeds of SCSI2
I think that this one is enabled by default, and using the configs (zuluscsi.ini) would allow you to turn this off for the Q700, which should help.
I have also been trying this challenge as well and have not been able to get 8.1 successfully installed on my Q700. I have tried numerous methods and settings, nearly all of which work on other Macs, but not on the Q700. I've gotten sidetracked playing with CD image settings, and a few other projects, but I hope to get back to this puzzle.
rabbitholecomputing
Vendor The First
Today, we released ZuluSCSI firmware version 1.0.4, which adds the ability to disable the prefetch buffer at runtime, by setting PrefetchBytes=0 in the [SCSI] section of the zuluscsi.ini file. In our testing, we've found that disabling the prefetch buffer on Macs which support synchronous SCSI works around an issue which we don't yet fully have a handle on, and will be fixed in a subsequent firmware release. We believe this may be caused by a DMA timeout or deadlock, but we're still working on getting to the underlying cause of this bug.
If you're using ZuluSCSI with any Mac, particularly with PowerMacs and most, if not all, all Quadra systems, and are experiencing stalls or lock-ups during heavy I/O, please update to firmware version 1.0.4, and then create a zuluscsi.ini file, if you don't already have one, and add the following two lines to it:
In addition to adding the ability to disable the prefetch buffer, the following logging-related improvements have been made:
- Added logging to clearly indicate whether prefetch is enabled (default is 8192 bytes) or disabled (=0)
- Added logging to clearly show synchronous SCSI speed negotiation/changes.
- Added checksum of transmitted data when debug mode is enabled
rabbitholecomputing
Vendor The First
@macuserman, We've just released firmware version 1.0.6 on GitHub, which should fully resolve the stability issues you've been seeing with your Quadra 700. Please upgrade at your convenience, and let us know here, if you continue to have any problems.
macuserman
Well-known member
@rabbitholecomputing Sorry for the delay on this, I just got back from a long business trip and things have been quite busy since I returned. I just wanted to say thank you publicly for taking the time to dig into this issue I really was starting to become very frustrated.
I was able to load the 1.06FW just this morning and it immediately booted fully from a random 7.1 image that I had on there from my numerous previous attempts. I then swapped to some images I received from @jasa1063 in a previous attempt to get things working. He had provided me with two images one 7.1 and one 8.1 both 2GB files with full system installs on them. Both files loaded right up and fully booted using this new FW. I didn't have time to play around with it much beyond that as far as system stability goes, but I will say this is incredibly promising, previously this did not work at all. I still am not using an .ini file the result I'm seeing here is simply with the FW upgrade.
Anyhow just wanted to say once again a huge thanks for continuing to work toward the resolution on this even when it seemed I'm sure from your side it looked like user error. I'll report back if there are any issues with stability in running through the proper channels.
Highly recommend the new FW to anyone else who was experiencing anything odd or similar to me.
Cheers!
