Re: Modern Macs DO have problems with 800K 3.5"s

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <60ighf$8i2$1@elna.ethz.ch>,
Henrik 'Ratte' Gudat <GUDATH@EZINFO.VMSMAIL.ETHZ.CH> wrote:
>Yo guys, please relax. There's aproblem with 800k disks, that's all.
>
>As for the facts, the problems started when Apple switched from Sony mechanisms
>to IBM drives. That was around the time the Quadras and Centrisses where in the
>shops. From my own experience, it seems Apple has silently fixed this issue to
>some degree. (Never had problems on my systems, but that doesn't prove
>anything.)

Actually, my experience is that some boxes with Sony mechs choke on 800K
disks too. A buddy had a Centris 660av with a Sony, and it had all kinds
of trouble with 'em. My Quadra 840av (with a brand new Sony service part 
floppy which I swapped in myself) never had trouble at all until I upped
the memory from 56 mb to 64 mb. Then it got more particular. There's four
16 mb SIMMs in there now, and just changing which SIMM is in which slot
can affect how well the floppy can read 800K disks. The way mine stands
now is it can read 800Ks which it formats, even after using 'em on the IIgs,
but some old disks from the Pre Mac days are a crap shoot. Happily it's
moot since I have a superdrive on the IIgs plus file sharing (which I use
for file swapping anyway.)

So the point is to try some of the fixes in the TIL article before blaming
your floppy drive. And not listen to Apple hating charlatans who take the
word of anyone who reports a problem without trying to cure it and pronounce
as gospel that everyone is gonna have the same problem.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com