Re: prodos disks mac <-> GS ?!

[Greg Buchner <nobody@wavetech.net>]

In article <97157t$rdl$1@news.fas.harvard.edu>,
 Benjamin O Zotto <zotto@nospam.fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> I guess my question is: what's the problem with the newer Mac drives?
> Why are they so different, and in what way-- and what's a surefire
> way of determining compatibility?

The best way to deterrmine compatibility is if the Mac drive sucks
the floppy disk in once it gets to a certain point.  These are called
auto-inject drives.  If you have to push the floppy in until it seats,
then it's a manual inject drive and may or may not work.

The only PPC I've ever gotten to write an 800K disk that worked good
on my GS was a PowerBook Duo 2300, but it was using equipemnt from
the 68K days.

The problem with Mac drives is that for years, Apple was using more
expensive drives made by Sony that handled both the Apple GCR and
Wintel MFM quite well.  But people kept on complaining about the
replacement costs of these drives so Apple went to drives that were
designed to be MFM and made them work with GCR on the PowerMacs.
The original drives would vary their speed depending on what part of
the floppy was being accessed so they could fit more on them.  This
was a hardware function of the drive.  With the later ones, this was
something that was emulated in software and didn't really function
as well.

Personally, once I had the right system software installed on the
IIGS side, I just networked to the Macs and copied stuff over that
way.  Was faster and easier.

Greg B.
-- 
Note:  To e-mail me, replace nobody with gjb
I don't get junk e-mail and intend to keep it that way.
If you want to send me spam, go jump off a cliff and make
the world a nicer place.