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magneto optical under MS-DOS

cchaven

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2003
Messages
169
Location
Roanoke, VA
I have a Pinnacle Micro Sierra 1.3GB MO drive that I'm trying to use on my ASL 386/33 under MS-DOS 5.0. It's connected to a Future Domain TMC-850M using PowerSCSI! 4.

It is seen on the bus by the card on boot and it is seen by and responds to the format and partition software provided by Pinnacle. I'm able to both format and partition both 650MB and 1.2GB 512byte/sec media.

The problem is that I can't get DOS to recognize the drive. This version of PowerSCSI doesn't support MO drives directly it seems and the PMO.SYS removable driver, which shows it was produced by Future Domain and Pinnacle, errors.

Is there another driver I need in order to access the drive as a standard DOS volume? I've had this drive for about 15 years and it was used on Mac's before I got it and since I've used it on both NeXT's and Amiga's without any issues.

Thanks
 
I don't know about Pinnacle Micro drives in particular, but Fujitsu MO drives have a jumper or switch to determine whether they show up as removable or fixed. I've had to use the fixed settings on some old machines that didn't want to talk to removable media, like the Emulex UC07 in my PDP-11/73. Might give that a try, if it's an option.
 
Have you tried using Adaptec's aspidsk.sys in combination with the TMC-850 ASPI driver? I recall playing with a positively ancient and heavy (and maybe the first commercially available?) Sony 2x5.25" 284MB MO drive that worked fine under DOS (with an Adaptec card) and even on my Apple IIgs.... all without any special drivers.

Edit: Might have been a Sony SMO-S501 going by pictures and what I could remember. It was a boat anchor in weight.
 
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I used to specify the PM 4.3G Apex drives years ago.

As I recall, an ASPI driver for your card and the Adaptec ASPI disk driver should do the trick.
 
Thanks for the tips. I'll try the Adaptec ASPI disk driver this evening and if that fails I'll pop open it's case and see if there is a mode selection on the drive itself.
 
I had Adaptec's EZ-SCSI 5 Deluxe handy so I tried it's ASPIDISK.SYS with the /D switch so it displayed additional info as it tried to load and it gives an error that the Pinnacle is under control of the host adapter BIOS. The Pinnacle is set to ID# 4 and I get that error even when no other drivers are being loaded other than the FD ASPI manager and the Adaptec ASPIDISK.SYS.
 
Looks like an older Future Domain card. Adaptec cards would clearly note that a drive was hooked via Int 13h BIOS control on boot when its option ROM ran and when its ASPI driver loaded. Normally SCSI removable devices will not be under BIOS control unless they are directly booted from or jumpered to show as a fixed disk. If you are not booting off of a SCSI device, try disabling the SCSI card's boot ROM (you likely have to physically remove it from the card) and loading aspidsk.sys or even the PowerSCSI/Pinnacle driver.
 
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While Future Domain had decent support for various devices (we had cd-roms, syquest drives, and scsi hard drives all on the same channel with their drivers), Adaptec's offerings were top of the line and would support almost anything and everything. I'd hate to say it, but changing to an Adaptec controller might be your best bet.
 
Future Domain cards tended to use Common Access Method (CAM) for interface to their cards, while Adaptec was ASPI. In theory, CAM was superior, but it was often supported as a subset. After Adaptec bought FD, some of the cards were supported via a layered driver called ASPICAM--you loaded the FD CAM drivers, then ASPICAM, then the Adaptec ASPI device-specific drivers. So you can use ASPI with FD cards if the FD cards support CAM.
 
Even with the BIOS removed from the FD card, both the PMO and ASPIDISK drivers refused to load. I finally put the BIOS chip back on the FD card and attached an external Sun HD to it...using nothing but the PowerSCSI! drivers. It worked great and I did as was intended all along..used it to back up the 400MB IDE drive so that I could put a 2GB DoM in it's place. The HD and the DoM wouldn't play ball connected together.

I thought about getting another Adaptec card and going that route, as in previous builds years ago I had both a 1522A and a 1542. Since the FD works fine with HD's and CD-ROMs though I really don't see the need to.

Thanks for all the suggestions
 
Future Domain cards tended to use Common Access Method (CAM) for interface to their cards, while Adaptec was ASPI. In theory, CAM was superior, but it was often supported as a subset. After Adaptec bought FD, some of the cards were supported via a layered driver called ASPICAM--you loaded the FD CAM drivers, then ASPICAM, then the Adaptec ASPI device-specific drivers. So you can use ASPI with FD cards if the FD cards support CAM.
Ah yes! I remember all this stuff now! We had to wade through this when picking a SCSI card for our 486 build. The drivers were key to having everything work on one SCSI card (which they did, and worked well too).
 
Even with the BIOS removed from the FD card, both the PMO and ASPIDISK drivers refused to load. I finally put the BIOS chip back on the FD card and attached an external Sun HD to it...using nothing but the PowerSCSI! drivers. It worked great and I did as was intended all along..used it to back up the 400MB IDE drive so that I could put a 2GB DoM in it's place. The HD and the DoM wouldn't play ball connected together.

I thought about getting another Adaptec card and going that route, as in previous builds years ago I had both a 1522A and a 1542. Since the FD works fine with HD's and CD-ROMs though I really don't see the need to.

Thanks for all the suggestions
Glad you got it working the way you wanted. It was always frustrating when things didn't work as they should have 'in theory'.
 
Hi community

I've recently acquired a Fujitsu MCP3130AP IDE 1.3G Magneto-Optical drive.
Tried to find MS DOS drivers for it and couldn't.
The only useful url I've found http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/misc/230MB.html - but the Fujitsu URL seems expired already.
Please help. Maybe suggest something compatible ?
 
Are you sure that DOS drivers or software ever existed for the drive? I was digging around web.archive.org and everything there for the larger MO drives seemed to be for windows. I cannot find this specific drive mentioned at all though.
 
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