(Copy of the email follows)

From: OSXSCSIfeedback
OSXSCSIfeedback@trillium.adaptec.com
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 03:06:38
To: Recipient List Suppressed:
Subject: Adaptec releases Mac OS X drivers

"Hello,
Since you have submitted feedback to Adaptec on our Mac OS X beta drivers I want to give you first shot at the initial release of our completed drivers. We hope to post these files Monday on the web so all customers can access them. These are fully supported by Adaptec Technical Support, but before you pick up the phone to give us a call please note a few things:

- Although these drivers will work on Mac OS X 10.0.4, Adaptec only supports them under Mac OS X 10.1 and later

- Mac OS X 10.1 shipped with early versions of these drivers, please update to the latest listed below.

- Deep Sleep on Power Macintosh G4s is not supported in this release (with the release of Mac OS X 10.1 we believe the the Power Management portion of the OS is complete and we can begin working on this feature now.)

- Orb drives do not mount (we are looking into this issue to determine if it is the lack of a Castlewood Orb driver in Mac OS X or a SCSI card driver issue)
[See the reader post below on how he got his Orb drive to mount on a 2930 SCSI card-Mike]

- Currently there is no CD Recording software that supports SCSI under Mac OS X, please check with the software developer for status

- If devices do not work when connected to out SCSI cards under Mac OS X but work fine under Mac OS 9 determine a few things

• is the hard drive formatted using a Mac OS X compatible software check with software vendor for details
• did the device require a driver to function under Mac OS 9, if it did require a driver (only hard drives didn't require an Extension or application based driver) check with device manufacture for Mac OS X compatible drivers and/or software

Note: a restart is required (but not forced by the installer) after installation of these drivers for the new version to load. If you are not booted off of a drive attached to a SCSI card and don't want to reboot see instructions at the bottom of this email.

__________________________________________________

Adaptec SCSI Card 2906
ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/mac/beta/apd2906_X_v102.hqx

Adaptec PowerDomain 2930
ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/mac/beta/apd2930_X_v102.hqx

Adaptec PowerDomain 29160 and 29160N
ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/mac/beta/apd29160x_X_v102.hqx

Adaptec PowerDomain 39160
ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/mac/beta/apd39160_X_v102.hqx

__________________________________________________

Warning this will only work if you are not booted off of the SCSI card you are trying to install the driver for.

1) Dismount (drag to the trash) all drives attached to the SCSI card (Hard drives and CDs)

2) Launch the Terminal application

3) At the prompt type

sudo kextunload Adaptec*

4) Enter the administrator password

5) Assuming no errors run the installer

6) If hard drives don't mount automatically Launch the Terminal application

7) At the prompt type

sudo autodiskmount

8) Enter the administrator password

9) If this doesn't work simply install and restart

If you experience any problems you can continue to provide feedback through this email address.

Thanks from the Adaptec Macintosh Team"

Reader's Orb Drive Mounting Tip for OS X 10.1 (from a forum post here)

" Upfront weaselly disclosure: if doing this results in hardware failure or data corruption, it's your own fault for listening to me.

In 10.0.4, I was able to access my SCSI Orb Drive, and use my Yamaha 4260 CD-RW as a CD-ROM drive; in 10.1, the Orb drive wouldn't mount, although the CD-ROM thing still worked. Turns out the driver Apple added for my SCSI card was causing the Orb drive to not mount. Once I removed it, I can mount my Orb drive fine, whether or not there's a disk in at bootup.

Drivers are located in /System/Library/Extensions - in my case, for my Adaptec 2930 card, the relevant driver is called Adaptec2906-2930.kext (if you have extensions turned off, it will appear as just Adaptec2906-2930). Despite the fact that this appears as a document in the Finder, it is actually a directory (well, technically, it's a Package). To remove this, I used the Terminal, as the Finder won't let you delete things in the System folder - you can probably log in as root and do it, but it was faster and more scary this way. The steps I took were:

1) Very Very Important: Drag a copy of the kernel extension (.kext) to your Documents folder, for safekeeping.

2) Boot up a Terminal window, and type
cd /System/Library/Extensions

3) To remove the kernel extension for my card, I typed
rm -r Adaptec2906-2930.kext
(Substitute the driver for your card here)

4) Restart your computer, and see if your fixed or removable drives magically show up. If not, you might as well copy the kernel extension back to the /System/Library/Extensions folder, in case its absence causes a problem in a future OS X update. If they do show up, though, I would periodically boot back into OS 9.x and back up the SCSI disks you're using in X - nobody is guaranteeing that this won't result in damaged files.

Still, it's nice to take a giant step forward to 10.0.4 functionality*.
Evan Evanson
B&W rev 2 G3
Adaptec 2930 SCSI card
Yamaha 4260 SCSI CD-RW
Castlewood ORB SCSI drive
OS X.1 (and 9.2.1, 9.1, and 8.6)

*just being reflexively sarcastic - except for SCSI problems, X.1 has been a huge quantum leap forward in functionality. Once I can use my Creative SoundBlaster Live card, my Palm IIIxe, and some audio apps natively in X, I'm pretty clearly going to be living here. But, obviously, that's up to the relevant third parties now.
Evan Evanson "