RamFAST Q&A time
By Jawaid Bazyar
Copyright (c) 1994 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Replies from Jawaid Bazyar, technician for Sequential Systems who support the RamFAST SCSI card.
Q) What's the latest RamFAST ROM revision? Have you any plans for a further one?
A) The latest ROM revision is 3.01e. I am currently working on a "be-all end-all" ROM
Q) What's the lowest ROM # that will work with a Syquest 105MB drive?
A) 2.0.
Q) Have you any plans to support a Sony minidisk drive? (if and when it comes out, and assuming that it has a SCSI model.)
A) Definitely.
Q) Does the RamFAST SCSI card support both SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 devices?
A) Yes. SCSI-2 if implemented properly is backwardly compatible with SCSI-1 controllers such as the RamFAST. SCSI-2 is many things. The only hardware change was to support a 16-bit SCSI bus.
Q) What CD-ROM drives can I use on a RamFAST SCSI card? And what RamFAST ROM revision do I need?
A) You can use any SCSI CD-ROM drive in existence, though I recommend the NEC drives for general capabilities. 3.01e is the minimum recommended ROM version needed.
Q) I am looking at an NEC Multispin x4 CD-ROM drive. It is multisession Kodak Photo CD aware, but how many of these extras can I use on the GS?
A) The Photo CD stuff is trivial to do, but the image quality will be poor, because Photo CD pictures are extremely high resolution and have an extremely high number of colors.
An opportunity exists for a Photo CD aware application on the Apple //gs. Until then, the main benefit that the top of the line drives bring is speed of access.
Q) Do different CD-ROM drives require different drivers on the RamFAST?
A) No, except for audio control. A Media Control driver will give access to audio control on most CD-ROMs. Sample source code is available for writing a Media Control driver for the RamFAST if your CD-ROM is not already supported.
Permission is hereby granted for non-profit user groups to republish this content. PLEASE CREDIT THE AUTHOR AND THE SOURCE: Applecations, publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia