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BlueSCSI

Compatibility

We expect compatibility to be universal.
As you test, please add any machines missing here.

Macintosh

See the speed of your Macintosh’s bus here

Working

NuBus SCSI Cards

Working with caveats

Plus
Portable
IIsi

The IIsi does not provide TERM POWER. It must be powered via the Berg connector or USB.

From the IIsi service manual:

“The 85C80 [SCSI controller] does not provide the internal SCSI disk drive with termination power; the drive provides the termination power.”

Clones
Mac’s with a replacement ROM SIMM

If you are using a 3rd party ROM SIMM in your SE, SE/30 or other Mac with a ROM SIMM slot you may need to modify your System file to enable the machine to boot. If your machine stops at the initial logo review this page for instructions on how to apply the fix: https://www.bigmessowires.com/mac-se30-with-upgraded-rom

Apple Network Server (ANS)

Install CD must be on the internal bus on ID0 and disconnect the original CD drive.
The internal bus does not provide TERM POWER, though the external DB25 bus does.

10 MB/sec Bus Macs

These macs have a Fast SCSI 10MB/sec bus and can take full advantage of BlueSCSI v2’s speed:

Among the Power Macintosh series, the 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, and 9600, Beige G3 all have 5 MBps narrow SCSI-2 on their external bus and a second internal bus (with no external connector) that runs Fast SCSI at 10 MBps

Lisa

Working

Apple II

Working

Apple IIGS:

Pippin Prototype

Working - HD and CD and BlueSCSI Toolbox changing CD!

BeBox

Working

[SCSI]
System="Generic"

Silicon Graphics (SGI)

Working

[SCSI]
EnableSCSI2=1
PhaseChangeDelay = 15

or

[SCSI]
Quirks=0
EnableSCSI2=0
SpeedGrade="TurboMax"
MaxSyncSpeed=20

IBM RS/6000

HP / Agilent

Working

Example of bluescsi.ini file for 362/382:

[SCSI]
System="Generic"
[SCSI6]
Vendor="HP"
Product="Blue"
SectorsPerTrack=123
HeadsPerCylinder=4

Name of the file with image - HD60_C2203.hpi .

Dell

Working

DEC / Compaq

Working

Use 512K sectors. Example for DEC-like CD-ROM emulation, which may be necessary on VAXen:

[SCSI6]
Type=2 # CD
Vendor="DIGITAL"
Product="RRD42 (C) DEC 4.5d"
BlockSize=512

Sun

Working

Hard drives

SunOS/Solaris are picky about drive geometry - file system creation may fail using default settings. Use the HeadsPerCylinder and SectorsPerTrack settings to change them to a value more in line with what is expected. When in doubt, it’s been reported that HeadsPerCylinder = 16 and SectorsPerTrack = 128 work as good general values.

You can also use the values in the Sun installation media’s format.dat to set up drives matching pre-defined configurations. This is especially helpful for SunOS 4.x which does not have any autodetection of drive parameters. The following example is the line for the “SUN2.1G” preset:

disk_type = "SUN2.1G" \
: ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
: ncyl = 2733 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 3500 : nhead = 19 : nsect = 80 \
: rpm = 5400 : bpt = 44823

Using the data from that entry, create a disk image of size (ncyl + acyl) * (nhead * nsect * 512) bytes. Then, in bluescsi.ini, set HeadsPerCylinder to the value of nhead and SectorsPerTrack to the value of nsect.

Example bluescsi.ini entry for a drive matching the above SUN2.1G specification:

[SCSI3]
Vendor = "SEAGATE"
Product = "ST32550N"
Version = "1.0"
Serial = "T3751351"
HeadsPerCylinder = 19
SectorsPerTrack = 80

The following table has the values for all the standard Sun disk configurations provided in SunOS 4.1.4:

Drive definition ncyl acyl nhead nsect # of 512-byte sectors Disk image size (bytes)
SUN0104 974 2 6 35 204,960 104,939,520
SUN0121 1520 2 4 39 237,432 121,565,184
SUN0207 1254 2 9 36 406,944 208,355,328
SUN0327 1545 2 9 46 640,458 327,914,496
SUN0424 1151 2 9 80 830,160 425,041,920
SUN0535 1866 2 7 80 1,046,080 535,592,960
SUN0669 1614 2 15 54 1,308,960 670,187,520
SUN1.0G 1703 2 15 80 2,046,000 1,047,552,000
SUN1.05 2036 2 14 72 2,054,304 1,051,803,648
SUN1.3G 1965 2 17 80 2,675,120 1,369,661,440
SUN2.1G 2733 2 19 80 4,157,200 2,128,486,400
CD-ROMs

512 byte sectors need to be used, otherwise you may encounter data transfer overrun errors. Both the OpenBoot prompt (device cdrom) and Solaris expect the drive at SCSI ID 6 per default. Example config for Sun-like CD-ROM emulation, not necessary but fun:

[SCSI6]
Type=2 # CD
Vendor="TOSHIBA"
Product="XM-4101TASUNSLCD"
BlockSize=512

Atari

Working

Amiga

Working

[SCSI]
System="Generic"
EnableSCSI2=0 ; Off
PrefetchBytes=0
[SCSI0]
SectorsPerTrack=32
HeadsPerCylinder=1

[SCSI]
System="Generic"
EnableSCSI2=0 ; Off
PrefetchBytes=0
[SCSI0]
SectorsPerTrack=32
HeadsPerCylinder=1

[SCSI]
EnableSCSI2=0

Commodore 8-bit

Working

NeXT

Working

[SCSI]
System="NeXT"

Acorn

Working

Ensure SCSIFSBuffers is configured to 0 for Morley cards, or they throw all sorts of errors (not BlueSCSI specific).

For CDROM access, the standard Acorn CDFSSoftSCSI driver (as per AKA35) doesn’t work - you must softload the CDFSSoftSCSI2 / CDFSSoftPower module.

Torch

Working

Set ‘Quirks’ to ‘OMTI’. Boot image must be HD00.hda otherwise Caretaker complains and halts as it expects to boot from SCSI 0, LUN 0.

Samplers

Working

Akai

Akai samplers and MPC units often (always?) use SCSI ID 6 to identify themselves, so avoid using images that use ID 6, or assign another ID to the device.

E-mu
Ensoniq
Korg
Kurzweil
Peavey
Roland
Yamaha

Professional Audio Gear

Working

Roland
Yamaha

Pay attention to what is explained in the AW4416 manual, supplement (v1.2 1.3) and supplement (v2) documents in regards to formatting. ‘Original’ is used for backing up and restoring songs while ‘FAT16’ is used for exporting and importing wav files. Disk Jockey v2 may not be the best solution to create images because of multiple partitions and size limitations. Check Custom Disk Images (Advanced) under BlueSCSI Images in the wiki on how to create hda image files for the BlueSCSI v2 connected to the internal SCSI port of the AW4416. The difference between the AW4416 and the AW4416A is that the latter has an ATAPI IDE CD recorder/player, not a SCSI one. In that case an IDE to SD is a the way to go. Avoid images using ID-6 since it is reserved for the AW4416 itself. If you use the external SCSI connector at the back of the AW4416, be aware an occupant CD recorder/player has ID-3 by default (jumper defined).

360 Systems

Used Initiator mode to dump a very loud Quantum Fireball ST and then target mode in place of the hard drive.

Chyron VME Systems

Working

IBM PowerSeries (PowerPC workstations)

Working

Uses unusual 512 byte block size for CD-ROM access, will work using

[SCSI]
Quirks=0
System=Generic

[SCSI2]
BlockSize=512

IBM PS/2

Working

IBM PS/2 Model 56SX type 8556 and Model 56SCL2 type 9556. Internal SCSI on the motherboard, supplies term/bus power. Set the system type in bluescsi.ini:

[SCSI]
System="Generic"


For accessing emulated CD-ROM drive images use and install “SCSI CD-ROM Driver Disk” (SCSICDRM.EXE) available at https://www.ardent-tool.com/storage/CDROM.html#Instal_IBMCDROM.

IBM PS/2 Model 80 with a Tribble SCSI adapter card, OS/2 3.x — tested with the CD changer workflow (cycling through multiple CD images via the eject command).

Additional setup notes

Intel Professional Workstation LP486E

Working

Intel LP486E has SCSI controller on motherboard and secondary (?) built-in BIOS supports booting from single internal SCSI drive out of the box.

PC

Expansion Cards Working

1 Install Zip Tools software in DOS and Windows to install all SCSI drivers, then use a utility such as Trantor SCSIWorks to add HDD and CD ROM capability. Ensure drive images are filled with 0s. Fdisk refused to format, used TFormat utility on SCSIWorks to format disk.

2 v4.0a SP3 drivers from https://theretroweb.com/uploads/drivers/fms-on-cd-v40a-sp3a-662a42ea349d9509404853.zip CD-ROM support with SHSUCDX.COM https://github.com/adoxa/shsucd (NOTE: Setting up CD-ROM in DOS with MSCDEX.EXE has compatibility issues).

Seagate ST02

This 8-bit ISA adapter may not work out of the box and needs a newer BIOS (3.2 or 3.3) that can be obtained from minuszerodegrees.net and burned to an EPROM/EEPROM. Use the following bluescsi.ini settings to be able to boot from a disk image:

[SCSI]
EnableSCSI2=0 ; Off

[SCSI0]
HeadsPerCylinder=4 ; Any small value should work such as 4, 6, 8

PC Laptops Working

FM Towns

Working

X68000

Working

SCSI interface

For X68000 with SCSI interface

[SCSI]
System="X68000-SCSI"
SASI interface

For X68000 with SASI interface (original/ACE/PRO (centronics 50 pin connector marked as “HARD DISK”))

[SCSI]
System="X68000-SASI"

To get the X68000’s HD BUSY LED to be controlled by the BlueSCSI, connect the centre (+) terminal of the BlueSCSI LED header to pin 34 of the SASI cable. This is typically (but not always) a red wire, at the centre end of the run of 9 wires. See here for pinout.

A note on the AM/WD 33C93 A/B SCSI Chips

Note the AM33C93A, AM33C93B, WD33C93A, WD33C93B which are common on Amiga and other systems in that era.

A longer phase change delay is needed (longer than the SCSI spec) for these chips. You can set this via the .ini file:

[SCSI]
PhaseChangeDelay = 15 ; if still having issues bump it by 5-10 till stable

15 seems to be the magic number. there should be no performance decrease as this is only for the phase change.

Users were using EnableSCSI2=false but that should be avoided and was just masking this issue.

Arcade

Working

PC-9801

Working

There were several 1st party and 3rd parties’ SCSI interfaces for PC-9801 series, and the following setting was confirmed with IF-92B. But these specific requirements seem to be very common for the series as these values come from the fact SCSI BIOS requires geometry information obtained via non-standard SCSI commands, and most interfaces assume these values for 3rd party devices. Official boards may need Vendor=NEC in addition to the setting below. Note that each interface would have another size limit, e.g. IF-92B v1.10 firmware recognize only <1GB disk, and can use 512MB of it.

[SCSI]
System="Generic"
SectorsPerTrack=8
HeadsPerCylinder=32

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Generated 2026-09-03.