Re: Modify a Mac external HD for a IIgs?

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

Marc Sira <toh@victoria.tc.ca> wrote:

: I believe PC Exchange came along (with ProDOS support) as of 7.5, and was
: superseded by File Exchange (with better FAT support, but less ProDOS) in
: 8.5 (8.1 on certain machines). Offhand I'd say they're phasing out ProDOS
: slowly, which is regrettable (but for that matter they're phasing out regular
: HFS in favour of HFS Plus, which is a good thing).

They won't ever get rid of normal HFS support though, too many CDs and other
disks that won't change format are out there. Plus it's a compatibility thing
with older stuff, although with Jobs running the show I doubt much thought
goes into that.

As far as losing functionality goes, one only need look at the file sharing
permissions from system 7 to 8. There used to be see files, see folders, and
make changes. As of 8.0 it's no access, read, and read/write.

: 7.1 or 8.5 Mac users can still create ProDOS partitions with an appropriate
: tool (like an older third-party hard disk program), but it'd probably be
: easier to just do it on the IIgs with a RAMFast or GSOS boot disk. It's also
: possible to create a ProDOS partition just by sector-editing the partition
: table ("Apple_HFS" becomes "Apple_ProDOS" - love that flexible partition
: scheme :) but that still leaves the problem of creating a filesystem. 

I've never seen a way to edit partition names myself. And from what I've seen
the partition name for a ProDOS partition is the same as the volume name,
slash and all. But all HFS ones are APPLE_HFS. In any event, Apple's
formatters as far back as 7.3.5 put a ProDOS savvy driver on disks. Plus an
easy way to make partitions is to make 'em HFS on the Mac and erase 'em into
ProDOS on a IIgs.

I wanted an old driver on my hard disk since I don't care if the ProDOS volume
doesn't mount on a Mac and the APPLE_DRIVER43 partitions from newer formatters
give the finder fits. So I used HD SC Setup 7.3.2 or so and made a 32 mb HFS
and a 200 mb A/UX volume on my disk. Then on the IIgs I erased the HFS to
ProDOS and the A/UX to HFS.

: Finally, one could take the PC Exchange control panel from 8.1, 8.0, or 7.5.3
: (which is freely available) and use it to temporarily replace File Exchange
: for long enough to "Erase" (initialise) a new ProDOS partition. Should work,
: though no guarantees are possible with 8.5 or later.

I say easier to let the IIgs handle that chore.
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