Re: low level format on a lisa?

[Mike Pfaiffer <pfaiffer@mts.net>]

Vince Briel wrote:

<snip>>
> Thank you to all who have tried to answer my question, and I
> apologize to those who feel my question did not belong here.  Keep
> this in mind:  I got answers from this news group, whereas I got
> blank from comp.mac.sys!
>
	Apologies are not necessary. You asked a question and you got an answer. 
Hopefully it was an appropriate answer. Even more, I hope it worked for you.

	Although we might have a friendly disagreement with what the most 
appropriate course of action was it still remains friendly. Paul and I 
will probably come to accept we disagree with each other. That's fine. 
It simply shows the group is still quite dynamic and capable of 
supporting a debate. This is good.

	This disagreement has prompted a bit of soul searching which has not gone 
on for a while. It is important for the members of the group to continue 
to examine the reasons behind the group. If the reasons change then the 
group should change to reflect it. This is also good.

	Both you and Paul bring up valid points about unsupported Apple products 
(other than the Apple// and Apple///) having few places to go for help. 
The way the company is going, it no longer supports 68K machines at all 
and may not support Power Macs either. This might be reflected in the 
Mac groups. In fact I asked a question about a Mac plus. The people in 
the Mac group I used thought it was a new Power Mac. Oddly enough I tied 
in the question to one I had for my Linux box and the folks in a Linux 
group were able to answer my Mac question. Paul and I disagree about the 
solution. Paul thinks of this group as a "catch all" group where people 
should be able to talk about *any* unsupported Apple product (Sorry if I 
got this wrong, Paul). I disagree with the use of this group as a 
default for when questions can't be answered elsewhere.

	However I agree with Paul in saying there *should* be a place for this. 
I've made one suggestion to help out and volunteered to help set it up. 
I'll make a second one. Although there are not enough Lisa users to 
justify a group by themselves, there would be enough people using 
unsupported Macs, Lisas, Newtons, and other devices to justify the 
"catch all" group. In fact this would be the perfect solution to our 
debate. It would even provide some of the advocasy and tech support 
which is notably absent from the net. Because it would be away from the 
"rabidness" of this group and the "snobishness" of the Mac groups it 
should even encourage posters who are too shy to post elsewhere. Since I 
have a Mac Plus sitting beside my Linux box, I might even make use of 
the group myself. If there are enough people, I will volunteer to help 
set up this as well. I can check into it, but I think 100 people would 
be necessary to set up a new comp group. I'd suggest a name like 
comp.sys.apple.unsupported.general.

	I'd better stop. The magazine (one of the links in my .signature) is due 
out on Thursday. When I'm under this kind of stress I tend to ramble on. 
BTW, if you or Paul would volunteer to write something short on the Lisa 
(for free), I can get it in this month if I get it before Wednesday. We 
have a little extra space this month.

				Later
				Mike





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