Questions regarding two hard drives and partitioning

[samaron]

Hi!

I got an X68000 XVI, non HD model. Currently it has a SD2SCSI connected externally through the SCSI port on the back. It is running low on space (has two 1GB partitions). My plan was to move it internally (I do have a cable), but also use another SD2SCSI externally. Wasn't really much information if this is possible or not, but it seems normal SCSI rules apply. The device I want to boot from has to have the lowest ID. Using a hard drive both internally and externally should be possible, then?

I would assume there are some termination resistors on the inside that has to be removed when moving the drive to the inside?

Regarding the partitioning, I see a program called GoverHD is necessary to achieve more than 1GB of space. Can a 2GB partition be used, or is it necessary to split it?

[SuperDeadite]

Never used a SCSI2SD...

But on my personal XVI I use 2 compact flash boards.  (CF Aztec Monster internal, CF PowerMonster 2 external).
Internal has 2 1gb partitions.  External is a single 1gb partition.

I can boot from either of the two internal partitions, and the computer will automatically detect and mount the external as drive C.
I tried to have 2 partitions on my external, but the computer wouldn't mount it on boot unless I disabled one of them using switch.
3 active partitions seems to be the limit without using some kind of additional driver.

Note having 3 partitions active can be a bit of an annoyance, as this changes your floppy drives to D and E.  Meaning you have to go through
and edit all the start.bat files.  Therefore I use A for HDD installed games, B for 2hdboot games, and C for music and floppy disk image archive.

GoverHD will allow the system to read partitions up to 2gb.  But the driver has to be installed into SRAM.  Meaning if your battery dies, or SRAM is
corrupted, or reset, your HD will become unreadable until you boot from floppy and install GoverHD again.  For this reason, I would not recommend going over 1gb
on your main boot partition. 

You can always just have multiple cards and swap them out as needed though.

[samaron]

Thank you for your response.

The way you use the different partitions/drives is what I had in mind. It is more of less sorted that way already, actually. The HDD image is called Baller or something like that. My understanding is that this image originated from you, SuperDeadite? Very similar layout to what you recommend, at least.

At the moment there are a lot of music files spread across the two partitions on the SD card. My intention was to move this over to another drive to free up more space. The main boot partition boots into LHES, while the secondary partition has SX-Window.

I suppose 1GB should be more than enough for all the music files and some other stuff. Probably better than trying to mess with this GoverHD thing.

Before I can use my SD card internally, I suppose these blue resistor packs needs to be removed first?

[vanpeebles]

Hi!

I got an X68000 XVI, non HD model. Currently it has a SD2SCSI connected externally through the SCSI port on the back. It is running low on space (has two 1GB partitions). My plan was to move it internally (I do have a cable), but also use another SD2SCSI externally. Wasn't really much information if this is possible or not, but it seems normal SCSI rules apply. The device I want to boot from has to have the lowest ID. Using a hard drive both internally and externally should be possible, then?

I would assume there are some termination resistors on the inside that has to be removed when moving the drive to the inside?

Can you tell me a bit more about how the external drive is set up please? I'm looking to add an external drive SD2SCSI to my Pro, using the SCSI card it came with that has an external Centronics connector.

[samaron]

I unfortunately don't know. The previous owner wasn't sure either. All I did was just plug it in and push the power button. There are no internal drive at the moment.

EDIT: Got the extra SD2SCSI today. It seems the external (now internal) drive was set with ID 0. I kept it at ID 0 and set the new external drive to ID 2. Works just fine, mounts the external drive and I now have three partitions. Didn't have to remove those blue resistor packs or whatever they are either.

[vanpeebles]

Excellent Can you take some piccies of the set up please? The cabling etc

[samaron]

Not much to take a picture of. The internal cable is the stock one that came with the computers, and the external one is just a generic SCSI cable. Anything specific you are after?

[vanpeebles]

Just to see what other peoples set ups are like really

[samaron]

I am fresh in the game my self. Only had the computer for a couple of weeks or so now. Not even properly hooked up, yet. Just a mess on the table in my living room lol.

The system is a X68000 XVI with xsimm10 (total of 12MB RAM) and System Sacom SX-68M-2 MIDI card.
MIDI modules I own are Roland MT-32 and SC-88.
Monitor is just some Lenovo LCD 5:4 type. Use a Micomsoft XPC-4 between the computer and monitor.
Hard drives are SD2SCSI. Main (internal) drive use an image called Baller or something like that. The external just has some random image to test. Will format it later.
Accessories are ASCII stick, Cyberstick, mouse and keyboard.
Most extensive mod done to the computer is replacing the original PSU with a picoPSU. Power plug is now a barrel connector where one of the ground posts used to be. Besides that, the general necessary maintenance has been done.

[vanpeebles]

That sounds like an excellent set up. I'm still finding my feet with it. Playing from floppies at the moment, and hoping to get an scsi2sd set up I'd love a midi card and module or two in the future!

[samaron]

Managed to format the external drive now. Would probably have struggled a bit if there wasn't an excellent wiki with all the necessary information. I did as you suggested, SuperDeadite, and formatted the drive to 1GB. Copying over all the music files now, which will take a while....