Hello all!

I bought this new toy that I didn't really know how to use and/or make it work. Model name is SQ555.
At first I had some difficulties making it work but in the end I managed to sort it out.

I found the manual online (Atari forums thanks; also available on Archive()org) - see attachment.
It gives all the required information as a stand-alone drive.

My first mistake was to fire it up without proper "termination", here the behaviour:

Windows 98 detects the drive but fails to read it, "no disk inserted" error. Green LED is solid, indicating that the unit has no issue with the disk.
The red LED flashes from time to time (only in Windows, when only hooked to PSU it doesn't)
"Format" command recognizes the size correctly (41MB), but fails with "short foram" with "no disk in the unit";
with "full" fails with "no disk or damaged": either way it just doesn't spin like any disk before issuing the fail message.

The unit requires a resistor network (8-pin 5*221/331G; 220 ohms) (see pic Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today).

Properly terminated it works wonders. I plugged a CD-ROM, having termination switched by a jumper, as last device on the chain to achieve that.
(to any SCSI user this is basic knowledge with a facepalm 😀).

Test:
1) R/W was difficult initially, after formatting in Windows (like any other disk) I performed a full surface Scandisk with error repair: disk works perfectly but 256KB appear as bad sectors; it took 5 hours with huge legs on bad sectors zones (75% was done in like 10-15 minutes).
2) Using OS X 10.4 it's trickier: initialisation isn't effective as in Windows. Repair wouldn't really do anything. R/W was slow and painful on bad sectors. (probably I should have used the PLI program that was on the disk to format - OS 9 or earlier version by the icons).
3) speed is not bad, 41MB were copied in less than a minute (I didn't clock it, just looked my watch). I didn't do a full test with a specific program.

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Well, this is my little banal experience with this historical relic.

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Some YT links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYQWgHE-G84 (short)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVpcN0PjEJQ (short)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJT_lXUPIu0 (connected to an iPhone)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=211-eHVkqeo (not 44 but nice history review)

Drivers and stuff:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030218161807/ht … st/syquest.html