External BlueSCSI (db25) with Mac IIci - boot from internal drive

I have an issue that whenever I have my external BlueSCSI connected to my Mac IIci it always boots from the BlueSCSI no matter the ID on the images on the SD card. I've doublechecked that my internal drive has ID 0 (540mb upgraded harddrive done in 1994 by previous owner).

This only occurs if I have hard drive images on the SD card, if there are only CD-ROM images it boots from the ID 0 internal drive as it should and the CD-ROM drives show up in MacOS 7.1

I do not have this problem for my PowerBook 180c using the same BlueSCSI (using HDI30 to DB25 adapter).

Any ideas on what might be causing this? I was under the impression the Mac IIci would always try to boot from ID 0 if it's available.

Is the internal drive visibly set as the boot drive in the Startup Disk control panel?

If it isn't, the system may be starting from the BlueSCSI because it responds before the internal drive has spun up.

ID 0 is last in boot priority. The Mac prefers a bootable device at ID 6, then ID 5, and so on. The solution is to specify the startup disk in the Startup Disk control panel, which is then stored in PRAM. If that has not been done, what you're describing is expected behavior.

I'm not sure why it's not preferentially attempting to boot from any bootable CD images on the BlueSCSI though.

Thank you for your suggestions, I'll check it out.

The reason I want it to boot from the harddrive in this case is that I want to copy some files from an image to the internal harddrive. If I add the BlueSCSI tools image it tries to boot from it even if its not a bootable image. I'm also running a Turbo 040 card in my Mac IIci and I have not been able yet to upgrade the firmware to run 7.5. The image I want to copy from runs 7.5 so then it just crashes on boot.

Try doing a command-option-shift-delete to maybe force it to boot off the hard drive?

Another option would be to keep the BlueSCSI powered down until the IIci starts booting off the hard drive. Plug the power adapter for the BlueSCSI in after you see the Welcome To Macintosh splash screen. Then, it'll mount when the Finder loads.