Re: GS/PC?

[mhackett@vaxxine.com (Michael Hackett)]

Erik Kloeppel <erik@hypermall.com> wrote:

> In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.950902230659.5398A-100000@sdcc15.ucsd.edu>,
> Enigma <llay@sdcc15.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
> >Colin Williamson <colin.williamson@mdtnbbs.com> wrote:
> >> If I gave a PC owner one of my SCSI drives, had him format it as an MS DOS
> >> drive, copied a bunch of stuff to it, then gave it back to me, could
> >> I hook it up to my IIgs and read it with the MS/DOS FST?
> >
> >Many people had responded "yes" to this question; while I would suggest
> >the answer "no." I haven't had the need to do this either myself--so I
> >haven't done it either. But I would say, it all depends on whether
> >RamFast SCSI or Apple H.S. SCSI recognize the DOS partition. While the
> >MSDOS.FST might be able to read the DOS disk, if the SCSI card doesn't
> >recognize the partition, it doesn't matter whether MSDOS.FST can read it
> >or not. :-)
>
> the cards don't give a hoot what's on the drive - all they do is pass
> information back and forth to the drivers and FSTs.  The drivers and FSTs
> have to do the recognising and translating of the data structure

Erik,

Don't the cards deal with the partition map, with the software then
taking over to deal with each partition?  Or are the drivers decoding
the partition map as well?

The recent discussion about Zip drives on GEnie seems to point to the
first case.  If you take a Zip disk that was formatted on a Mac (except,
as has been discovered with FWB Toolkit (?), I believe), the RamFast
will choke on it, while the Apple card has no problem with it.
Conversely, if you format a Zip disk with the RamFast, the Mac will not
read it, but a disk formatted with patched ADU (to write the Mac driver
partition) on an Apple SCSI card will work just fine on a Mac.

I may have some of the details wrong (I haven't been taking notes), but
the point is that the RamFast does not seem to like the Macintosh driver
partition on disks, so until you test it, how can you tell whether it
will be able to understand a map laid down by MS-DOS?

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Michael Hackett       Internet: mhackett@vaxxine.com    GEnie: M.HACKETT
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