🚀 go-pugleaf

bianco@cs.odu.edu (David J. Bianco) writes:

> Not being familiar with setting up a Mac system (I have used them before,
> however), I have a question for more experienced souls. 
> At work, we have a Mac IIx with a 40MB internal hard drive with a rather
> cluttered system folder (since everyone who uses it feels they must make
> their own contribution to the system pool of DA's, fonts and such).
> We recently got a Syquest 44MB external removable hard disk and many HD
> cartridges.  What we would like to do is to have a basic system set up
> on the internal with DA's and fonts and such that everyone will use
> (VirusDetective, for example).  
> We would also like to be able to give each user their own HD cartridge and
> let them build on the basic system and tailor it to their own needs/wants.
> So far, however, we have come to a dead end. Is there any way to 
> accomplish this?
> I tried setting the startup device to be the external drive,
> but it didnt work...
Booting from an external SyQuest can work, however .... Normally, whenever
a catridge is inserted, the SyQuest goes into a state called "Unit Attention".
Only specially formatted catridges can avoid this. For this you are dependent
on the software that came with your SyQuest drive. (Or you have to buy
something decent). The Unit attention causes the Mac to skip the Syquest at
first. Since it findss a bootable system on the internal hard disk a boots
using that partition. It never gets a change to try the SyQuest again, which
would succeed, since the unit attention state will by now no longer exist.
Another reason for this not to work, may be an incorrectly written driver
for your SyQuest. In that case you are out of luck, you wil;l have to get
some other software to format your SyQyest and install another driver.


--dolf
--
Dolf Starreveld  Phone: +31 20 592 5056/5022 (FAX: 5155), TELEX: 10262 HEF NL
EMAIL:           dolf@fwi.uva.nl (dolf%fwi.uva.nl@hp4nl.nluug.nl)
SNAIL:           Dept. of Math. and Computing Science, University of Amsterdam,
                 Kruislaan 409, NL-1098 SJ  Amsterdam, The Netherlands