Re: Macs and 800K disks

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <11SEP199619560034@vax2.concordia.ca>,
Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
>In article Jawaid Bazyar <bazyar@hypermall.com> writes...

>>Indeed, my Performa 6115CD sometimes just totally forgets how to deal
>>with 800K floppies. Can't read them, can't write them, etc. I suspect a
>>bug in the driver. Tony Diaz mentioned that you can hook an actual 800K
>>floppy drive up to a newer Mac and it works fine, and more reliably with
>>800K floppies. I've never done that, but Tony's usually right :)

>    Too bad Apple removed the Diskport (for supporting external floppy
>drives) from all current Macintosh systems. Actually I think beginning
>sometime in 1993, the Diskport was removed and Apple replaced the Sony
>mechanism with an inexpensive IBM-brand floppy mechanism.

   Well, I certainly would like the **** macs to be halfway
consistent.  Either they support 800K disks, or they don't. None of
this "depending on the phase of the moon and whether you sacrificed a
file to ResEdit recently" crud. None of this "If it was manufactured
with this 3.5" drive from X factory on Y/Z/199*, it'll work; A on
B/C/199D it won't" crud. 

   A computer with the multicolored Apple logo on the front (and
possibly authorized clones) and a 3.5" drive builtin should be able to
read and write 800K disks flawlessly. If not, it was a lemon when it
was sold, and/or it needs to go in for repairs/replacement. Selling
some large fraction of recent models with these flaws is a BAD thing.
If these were cars, there'd be a class-action lawsuit by now.

   If they aren't reliable, that's worse than not supporting it,
because tons of people will go through all the right motions, and
downloading stuff to their Apple II will fail. Then, they complain
that they did everything that the FAQ says, and I can't do a dang
thing about it except to tell them that from what I've heard reported,
Macs can be flaky.

   [To you mac geeks who'd like to respond: SHUT UP! I know your Mac's
3.5" drive works great for you, but I don't give a * about you. I care
about all the people that are getting bitten by the flakiness. If you
really cared about supporting the Mac, then you'd be helpful to those
who can't get things working after following all the right steps, then
complain louder to Apple to fix the **** thing.]

   Hmmm. Do we need a 12-step program for recovering Macheads? The
usual first step is admitting that there IS a problem with the
computer itself, not blaming it on the user. A bunch of them here
aren't to that stage yet.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein