Re: PC or Mac?

[Greg Weston <gwestonREMOVE@CAPSattbi.com>]

In article <a3ld5l$mqd$1@merope.saaf.se>, Paul Schlyter
<pausch@saaf.se> wrote:

> >> That would mean they were formatted with and HFS directory structure
> >> (as opposed to a FAT structure). I don't know your exact
> >> circumstances.  If you can read on an x86 box floppies that she's
> >> writing from her Mac, she's writing to FAT floppies. Convenient for
> >> file transfer, but if you don't need it it's unnecessarily slow for
> >> her.
>  
> Speed isn't an issue here since these floppies are used only from
> time to time.  But it's obviously FAT floppies, and she never did
> anything particular to select floppy format.

What we're telling you is that there are three options:
1) They came into your possession FAT and never reformatted.
2) They were formatted FAT while in your possession.
3) You've got software on your PC that can read the HFS file system.

I consider those options to be listed in rapidly declining order of
likelihood. Macs use their own file system by default, but will use FAT
without complaint or warning.


And for the prior poster:

> > Mac 1.44MB floppies are written with MFM encoding and HFS or
> > FAT formatting.  "Native" Mac HD floppies are HFS formatting.

ProDOS is also an option as an add-on with most version of Mac OS over
the last decade and - I believe - standard with a couple of releases. I
know sometime during the 8.x cycle I had ProDOS support without going
out of my way to install the FS plugin.

G