Re: MultiMegabyte floppy for the II?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Patrick Schaefer wrote:

>Wayne Stewart schrieb:
>
>> > It seems likely that a SuperDrive could read and write to
>> > them, but I wonder whether they could be formatted as other
>> > than FAT 12 floppies?
>
>> I picked up one today and it apears to be a no go with the
>> Apple II. I tried it on the IIgs in a SuperDrive and it was
>> unable to read it. So I tried formatting it and I get
>> an error. 
>
>These adapters unterstand MFM format, but they cannot handle a
>filesystem. They don't care for the position of the R/W head, from the
>adapter's point of view there is only a continous data stream.
>
>You can use them with any HD MFM drive (Mac, PC or Superdrive), but
>you'll have to write a special driver for it.

Sounds right.

The flash media that I have are all formatted in MSDOS FAT 12 format.
There is, indeed, a file system, and it appears to be common to all
digital cameras (that I have seen).

I have used PC-based disk recovery programs extensively to recover
deleted/mangled pictures from SmartMedia, and the format is clearly
FAT 12.

MP3 players, however, generally use a proprietary (undisclosed)
file system for flash memory.  (That's why a flash card used in an
MP3 player must be re-formatted before it can be used in a digital
camera or with a computer.)

-michael

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