TITLE
    SCSI Manager Update 1.2: Read Me
Article ID:
Created:
Modified: 		30289
12/9/97
3/8/00
TOPIC

    Name: SCSI Manager Update

    Version: 1.2

    Released: December 4, 1997 (Previously released by Power Computing)

    Requires:
    A Power Computing PowerBase computer and one or more external SCSI Hard Drives formatted with FWB Hard Disk Toolkit PE versions 1.7.7 or earlier. If you are using version 2.05 or later, the SCSI Manager Update is not necessary.

    Description:
    The SCSI Manager Update corrects a timing issue that may occur on some PowerBase computers when external SCSI hard drives are connected. PowerBase computers experiencing this issue will hang at the gray screen presented during the startup process and progress no further. Although the update only affects these computers, it will run on any Power Computing computer enabling customers to install the update on drives that may be used on multiple computers. If you have a PowerBase computer with an internal IDE hard disk drive, you do not need to use the SCSI Manager Update. Apple Computer addressed the problem with the 6360/64xx/54xx Update (included on your Power System Software CD) and also in Drive Setup 1.2.2 included with Mac OS 7.6. For complete information, please see the Read Me included with this software.

    Availability
    http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n10969

    This software consists of a Disk Copy NDIF (New Disk Image Format) compressed image, which requires Disk Copy 6.1 or later to use. Download this software to your hard drive and then double-click it to use it. Disk Copy is available in the Utilities folder.

    Disk Copy 6.1 (or later) or Disk Image Mounter 2.1 (or later) from Apple are the recommended applications to access all disk images released by Apple and are the only supported applications to access NDIF disk images.

DISCUSSION

    About the SCSI Manager Update

    The SCSI Manager Update corrects a timing issue that may occur on some PowerBase computers when external SCSI devices are connected. PowerBase computers experiencing this issue will hang at the gray screen presented during the startup process and progress no further. Although the update only affects these computers, it will run on any Power Computing computer enabling customers to install the update on drives that may be used on multiple computers.

    While Apple resolved this issue in Drive Setup 1.2.2, included with MacOS 7.6, a limitation of Drive Setup prevents the update from installing on non-Drive Setup supported devices. For PowerBase computers with SCSI hard drives formatted with FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, Power Computing has developed the SCSI Manager Update for use with these drives.

    The SCSI Manager Update has only been developed for use with Power Computing computers. and the update application will gracefully quit if run on non-Power Computing computers.

    Who should use the SCSI Manager Update?

    The SCSI Manager Update is being provided by Power Computing for users with SCSI Hard Drives formatted with FWB Hard Disk Toolkit PE versions 1.7.7 or earlier. The update is also included as part of FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit disk driver version 2.05 or later. If you are using version 2.05 or later, the SCSI Manager Update is not necessary.

    Power Computing at this time does not use FWB version 2.05 so if you have not upgraded to FWB version 2.05 or later, you may need the SCSI Manager Update.

    Upgrades to the latest version of FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit PE are available from FWB by purchasing a "Registration Upgrade " for $29.95 from FWB. The upgrade includes new disks with the latest version of the software, a new serial number, and a registration card. Included in the upgrade is technical support from FWB. The upgrade includes the SCSI Manager Update patch.

    If you have a PowerBase computer with an internal IDE hard disk drive, you do not need to use the SCSI Manager Update. Apple Computer addressed the problem with the 6360/64xx/54xx Update (included on your Power System Software CD) and also in Drive Setup 1.2.2 included with MacOS 7.6.

    Installing the SCSI Manager Update

    CAUTION: Before installing the SCSI Manager Update, back-up all important data on the drive being updated.

    To install the SCSI Manager Update, do the following:
      1. COPY the SCSI Manager Update application to a floppy disk. The Update cannot install on to the active startup disk or the volume containing the SCSI Manager Update application.

      2. RESTART the computer from the Power Computing Software CD. This can be achieved either by selecting the Power CD as the designated startup device in the Startup Disk control panel, or by restarting the computer hold down the Command, Option, Shift, and Delete keys as the computer restarts.

      3. INSERT the floppy diskette containing the SCSI Manager Update into the floppy drive.

      4. After the floppy disk icon appears on the desktop, LOCATE the SCSI Manager Update icon and double-click to launch the application.

      5. The application will scan for all connected hard drives, inspecting them to see if they require the update. The "Select Drive" window will appear. Click on the "Next drive" button to browse through selection of all detected drives. If a drive needs to be updated and can, the "Patch" button will be enabled. You should update any drives that are used as startup disks.

      Known Issues

    • FWB Hard Disk Toolkit PE will issue a message that hard disks using the SCSI Manager Update have a non-HDT driver installed.
    This message should simply be ignored. Changes are made to the hard disk driver partitions that are necessary to load the Update patch. These changes prevent the FWB Toolkit Application 1.7.7 or earlier from detecting the presence of the FWB driver even though the driver is still installed.

    Updating the driver with HDT version 1.7.7 or earlier after the SCSI Manager Update has been installed is not necessary and should not be attempted. Press 'Cancel' when prompted to update the driver.

    Updating the driver with HDT version 1.7.7 or earlier is also not necessary during the installation process for MacOS 7.6 and should not be attempted. Ignore instructions in the MacOS 7.6 to update your disk driver as it has already been updated by the SCSI Manager Update application.

    IMPORTANT: If you update the disk driver with HDT 1.7.7 or earlier, the SCSI Manager Update patch will no longer be effective and you could again experience the hang at startup. There are two remedies to this problem:

    1) Backup, reformat, and reapply the SCSI Manager Update.
    2) Update the disk driver with FWB Hard Disk Toolkit version 2.05 or newer which has the update built into the driver.
    • After installing the update, the computer still hangs at startup.
    At system startup, some hard drives do not 'spin up' in time for the MacOS to load the SCSI Manager Update and disk driver. The device is not ready for access and the MacOS begins to scan the SCSI bus. Since the SCSI Manager Update is not loaded yet, the computer will hang when checking the scanner.

    To resolve this problem, make sure you have selected a startup disk in the Startup Disk Control panel. The MacOS will wait longer for a device selected as the startup disk allowing the SCSI Manager Update and disk driver to load before checking other devices on the SCSI bus.
    • Why will the application not update my drive?
    The SCSI Manager Update is only for Power Computing systems formatted with FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit, versions 1.7.7 or earlier. The update will not work with IDE hard drives that ship in some PowerBase systems.

    The SCSI Manager Update is intended for use on SCSI hard drives connected to Power Computing computers using versions of the FWB Hard Disk Toolkit driver prior to version 2.0.5. FWB drivers version v1.7.5, v1.7.6, and v1.7.7 can be updated.

    FWB drivers, version 2.0.5 and newer, do not need updating as the updated is included in the driver. No other version of the driver can be updated.

    The update will not install on hard drives formatted by a utility other than FWB Hard Disk Toolkit. In order to install the update on a non-HDT formatted drive you will need to initialize the drive and install the FWB Hard Disk Toolkit driver.

    Do the following:

    1. BACKUP the data on your hard disk by copying the data to another drive or other suitable backup media before proceeding.

    2. RESTART the computer from the Power Computing Software CD. This can be achieved either by selecting the Power CD as the designated startup device in the Startup Disk control panel, or by restarting the computer hold down the Command, Option, Shift, and Delete keys as the computer restarts.

    3. LAUNCH FWB Hard Disk Toolkit. HDT is located in the Utilities folder on the Power CD.

    4. SELECT the drive to up updated.

    5. CHOOSE the 'Initialize' command from the "File" menu.

    6. You will be presented with a warning message which states, "The disk at ID x already has data on it. Initializing it will wipe out all existing data with no possibility of recovery." PRESS the "Continue" button.

    7. A dialog box will appear which asks you to "Choose a partitioning method". Select "Maximum Macintosh" and press the "OK" button.
    • Drive is Full Error Message
    In order for the update application to work there must be room on the drive to add the update. If your drive is full, nearly full, or fragmented then there may not be enough contiguous free space left on the drive to add the update. To make room for the update do the following:

    1. BACKUP the data on your hard disk by copying the data to another drive or other suitable backup media before proceeding.

    2. REMOVE any unneeded data from the drive.

    3. DEFRAGMENT your drive.
    • Drive has multiple partitions
    The update will not be installed on any drive which has had additional partitions installed onto it after it left the factory. (Examples of extra partitions are DOS partitions, extra Macintosh HFS partitions, and backup partitions.) This can be resolved by doing the following:

    1. BACKUP the data on all of the partitions by copying the data to another drive or other suitable backup media before proceeding.

    2. REINITIALIZE the drive (see instructions above) for one MacOS HFS partition.

    3. INSTALL the SCSI Manager Update (see instructions above).

    4. REPARTITION the drive for multiple partitions as desired
    • Some older drives not supported
    The application will not install the update onto some drives which shipped with the Power Computing's NuBus based computers, the Power 100 and Power 120. However, these computers do not need the update unless you plan to move the drive to a PowerBase computer. If you do intend to move a drive from a Power 100 or Power 120 to a PowerBase, you will need to reformat the drive with a later version of HDT (1.77 or newer) or use HDT 2.0.5 where the update is not required.

    What is installed by the SCSI Manager Update?

    The SCSI Manager Update installs a patch to the selected hard disk and installs FWB HDT driver version 1.7.7. Modifications are made to the hard disk driver partitions to allow for the SCSI Manager Update patch to be loaded at system startup and then for the FWB hard disk driver to be loaded.

    None of the SCSI Manager Update changes are visible after installation as the Update will not install any system software. To confirm whether or not the update is installed, run the update application again. You can confirm which devices have been updated by selecting the drive after the scanning process. The 'Select Drive' window will display the status of the patch for the selected device.

    Changes from SCSI Manager Update 1.0

    The SCSI Manager Update 1.2 resolves issues which caused errors in drive diagnostic utilities including Disk First Aid and Norton Disk Doctor. Power advises that all customers who installed the SCSI Manager Update 1.0 also install the SCSI Manager Update 1.2 to resolve these issues.

    SCSI Manager Update 1.2 now works in some cases where the patch did not address the issue it was intended to fix.

    (3/11/97)

    © 1997, Power Computing Corporation. All rights reserved.
    All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective holders.

Document Information
Product Area: Apple General Information
Category: Apple On Line Resources
Sub Category: Apple SW Updates

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