Re: ProDOS disks and Mac LC-II

["Henry Broekhuyse" <broekh@unixg.ubc.ca>]

Dennis Jenkins <dennis@usb.com> wrote in message
3A54B247.80B8C1A3@usb.com">news:3A54B247.80B8C1A3@usb.com...
> Hello,
> I have a Mac LC-II.  With it I can format 1.6M/1.4M disks for HFS, FAT
> and ProDOS.  It will not let me format a 800K floppy as anything.  It
> will not mount any 800K prodos disks.  My IIgs can read/write/format
> 800K prodos disks just fine.
>
> Any thoughts?

You are probably using 3.5" HD floppies.
The IIgs (without a SuperDrive) doesn't know about HD floppies - it just
assumes all floppies are DSDD.
Your Mac, on the other hand, does know the difference and will refuse to
read/write/format it as anything other than a HD disk. You could work around
this problem by blocking the hole on the other side of the disk from the
write-protect slot with opaque tape - your Mac will then read/write/format
it correctly.

One last thing - it is generally not a good idea (from both a theoretical
and practical point of view)  to use HD disks as replacements for DSDD disks
even though they will work with the trick noted above.