Re: Making Apple II 3.5 inch disks with a modern Mac

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@orcon.net.nz>]

In <8vmsa1t2qt70etrdgitf3s9t3bjac0j02m@4ax.com> Mitchell Spector  wrote:
> Lockar <lockar@apple2forever.DOTorg> wrote:
> 
>>In article <d8ksrn$qg1$1@skeeter.ucdavis.edu>, Jibbajaba
>><cpalaimo@excite.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have an iMac G5 running OSX Panther.  If I go out and buy a USB 3.
>>> 5"  floppy drive, can I make disks that an Apple //c+ would be able 
>>> to read? 
>>>   Perhaps using an emulator or something?All I am looking to do is 
>>> download .sdk files and whatnot from the web and use my //c+ to make 
>>> disks for my old ][+.
>>> 
>>> Possible?
>>> 
>>> Thanks guys.
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>
>>     No that will not alow you to make Apple // ProDOS disks.  You 
>>     will
>>need an 'old world' Mac in order to do that.
> 
>     The last "modern" Macintosh that can still read and write GCR-
> formatted floppy disk, such as 800K ProDOS, would be the beige G3 
> series (actually they're really platinum colored) or early Powerbook 
> G3's.
>
>     I picked up a desktop 233 MHz G3 last week and it recognizes IIgs
> floppies just fine under MacOS 8.6. I haven't yet installed MacOS X (
> still hunting for a copy) but I'd question whether it still has ProDOS 
> support.

Not only does it have no ProDOS file system support, it has no support 
for the built-in floppy drive at all! The OS works fine with USB floppy 
drives though, since it treats them exactly the same as any other drive. 
If you want you can even partition them or set them up as RAID volumes. 
But of course there are no USB drives that can handle Apple GCR disks.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz/
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