Rabbit Hole Computing:Basic Usage
SD Card Preparation
Both the ZuluSCSI and ZuluIDE devices utilize either SD or microSD cards to load disk images. Your SD card should be formatted either as FAT32 or exFAT (not NTFS) on at least one partition, if your card has more than one. Cards you use with the device need to fit the following criteria:
- Card must be labeled as either SDXC or SDHC
- MBR or DOS partition type (not GPT)
- No size limitations (see below)
Note that certain older cards (typically manufactured before 2008 and usually 4GB or smaller) will fail to be detected by the device. This is not the fault of the device; it's a speed limitation of the SD card itself. There is no known upper limit to the size of card you can use in the device, and has been tested with 256GB, 400GB, and larger cards that are currently available for sale.
File Naming on the ZuluSCSI
Create or copy a single valid disk image file into the root directory of your SD card and rename it based on the device you want it to serve as. If the image is a hard drive, name it HDx.img or HDx.hda, and replace the x in the filename with the desired SCSI ID number, which is a unique number between 0 and 6 (i.e., HD4.img for a hard drive assigned as unit 4 on the SCSI bus). The image will automatically be configured and placed on the SCSI bus.
For optical media images, name image files as CDx.iso or CDx.img, again replacing the x in the filename with the SCSI ID number. Any image loaded here will be automatically configured by the device as a SCSI-attached optical drive with a standard 2048-byte sector size.
File Naming on the ZuluIDE
File names on the ZuluIDE are far less restricted, but are still limited to only a few formats. Files ending in .iso or .bin/cue are automatically loaded as optical media images, while images ending in any other extension not on the Ignored List are treated as other generic removable media, Zip disks, or hard drive images. The type of device the ZuluIDE is configured as defaults to an optical drive, but can be changed with some INI settings loaded from the SD card at power-on.
Attach your device to its bus, attach power, turn the system on, and let the device work its magic!
For specifics, see the ZuluSCSI Operations Guide or the ZuluIDE Operations Guide.