Maximum hdd capacity with BlueSCSI device in hddriver v7.93 - For use with Cubase Audio on the Falcon?

[blaylok]

I would like to set up and trial a new BlueSCSI device for use with my Falcon and Cubase Audio.

I need to create a blank image with an emulated hdd size on my micro sd card for hddriver v7.93 to recognize so that it can be formatted and partitioned correctly.

What is the maximum hdd capacity I am able to use with my new BlueSCSI device in hddriver v7.93 for use with Cubase Audio on the Falcon?

[uweseimet]

I'm afraid I cannot give a definite answer on this, because I don't use BlueSCSI but RaSCSI. In general, with any hard disk/memory card/virtual drive solution the maximum partition size is limited by the TOS version (see the HDDRIVER FAQ for the TOS limits). The maximum SCSI drive size for HDDRIVER 7.93 is 2 TB I think, but I am not absolutely sure because 7.93 is so old. It is defnitely more than you can make use of with plain TOS, because you would need MiNT or MagiC for partitions (FAT32 or ext2) of more than 1 GB.
Provided that BlueSCSI works at all (it is not an officially supported platform for HDDRIVER, and I don't think I ever got any feedback on BlueSCSI) you should just give your preferred drive size a try.
Note that you might run into issues because HDDRIVER 7.93 is less SCSI compliant than current versions of HDDRIVER, which might affect using HDDRIVER 7.93 with BlueSCSI.

[blaylok]

Thanks Uwe,

I will give it a try and report back how it goes.

[uweseimet]

Thank you, some feedback would be helpful, not just on BlueSCSI and HDDRIVER 7.93, but (even more important) also on BlueSCSI and more recent versions of HDDRIVER, in case you have a license for a newer version than 7.93.

[uweseimet]

Any news?

Even though the HDDRIVER website mentions it, I should probably explicitly point out here that most functionality of a current version of HDDRUTIL can also be used when HDDRIVER 7.93 is running. HDDRUTL even works with other hard disk drivers, as long as they correctly support XHDI and the SCSI Driver, which are both non-proprietary and open software interfaces.
Only when it is about configuring HDDRIVER there may be a coupling between HDDRIVER and HDDRUTIL and HDDRUTIL may complain about a version mismatch. But general functionality like formatting, copying, testing or configuring devices is usually driver-independent.

[uweseimet]

One more note on using HDDRIVER with Cubase Audio: The problem with Cubase is that its SCSI handling is not compliant with the SCSI standard and that it can cause issues with peripherals or when there is other software that is also using the SCSI bus.
Since version 8 HDDRIVER offers much higher compatibility to the SCSI standard than any version before, in particular by giving full bus control to the target device, just as mandated by the standard. In addition, since HDDRIVER 8 the SCSI Driver target interface is supported. A result of these changes were potential issues related to the coexistence of Cubase and HDDRIVER 8 or higher.

Only when creating the note on saving 3 KiB RAM I realized that installing HDDRIVER without SCSI Driver target interface support might also make a difference when using Cubase Audio. I cannot test this myself, but users who have a license for HDDRIVER 11 and fall back to HDDRIVER 7.93 when using Cubase Audio might want to verify whether there are still any Cubase issues with HDDRIVER 11 at all, or whether they vanish after installing the HDDRIVER flavor without target interface support. Note that after changing the corresponding setting in HDDRUTIL you have to re-install HDDRIVER in order for the change to become effective. HDDRIVER.SYS on the boot drive should now be about 3 KiB smaller than before.

Note that HDDRIVER 11 is the first version where in HDDRUTIL you can choose between installing HDDRIVER with or without SCSI Driver target interface support.

[uweseimet]

A note on the BlueSCSI hardware/software: Version 1.1 has been successfully tested with HDDRIVER. It is important that the cable is short.
BlueSCSI 1.1 is now officially supported by HDDRIVER 11. The transfer rate according to XFERRATE.TTP is about 1100 KB/s, which is about the same as what you get with RaSCSI.