Re: Modify a Mac external HD for a IIgs?

[toh@victoria.tc.ca (Marc Sira)]

In our last episode, toh@victoria.tc.ca (Marc Sira) said:
>>> PC Exchange (File Exchange in Mac OS 8.x) does support ProDOS filesystems in
>>> Inside Mac V partitions; I've used it for years.

Ok, my final word on this, after some experimentation (this always happens when
I venture into newsgroups I used to read). The problem appears to be with Mac
OS 8.x rather than File Exchange itself; switching back to PC Exchange provides
exactly the same support for ProDOS volumes. You can mount and work with 
ProDOS filesystems, but the Mac Finder's "Erase Disk" command doesn't recognise
them, and you can't create one with it as you could in earlier Mac OS versions
(7.5 or possibly 7.6). However, you do still get the option to initialise as
ProDOS when an attempt is made to mount an unrecognised or zeroed filesystem,
with the "Eject or Initialise" dialog. You can also create a FAT filesystem
this way (if you're masochistic). This disparity is probably due to the former
code being in the Finder, and the latter in the System itself.

I haven't actually tested this with 8.1 or 8.0, but my expectation is that
people will eventually run either 7.x or the latest 8.x, and the major Finder
changes happened at 8.0 so that's probably the cutoff point.

-- 
Marc Sira		|	toh@victoria.tc.ca
If you can't play with words, what good are they?