Re: First Impressions of "iMAC"

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Dave Althoff (dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:

: That's funny; that is just the opposite of what I found with the Quadra
: 640AV's at work.  Disks formatted on the Quadras would work fine with my
: 800k drives both at home and at work; but disks formatted with my 800k
: equipment frequently would not work on the Quadra.  Furthermore, the
: Quadras generally hated all manner of 800k disk as a matter of course, and
: would generally require about ten minutes to mount an 800k ProDOS disk
: (thank heaven for the HFS FST for GS/OS!).

The TIL article which I quoted to Nathan in response to his typical Apple
hating spew about this problem lists some fixes for getting 800Ks to work.
Fixes include turning off speech recognition and making sure there are no
composite SIMMs installed. My 840av became less reliable with 800Ks after
I upgraded from 56 mb to 64 mb. Evidently the order of the SIMMs in the 
slots could affect how well disks work. It is 50-50 with ProDOS disks now
but HFS 800Ks always work. All but some ten year old floppies will work 
after the drive grinds on 'em long enough.

: Hmmm...Now that the lab has been upraded to G3's, I should test 'em out
: and see if their ProDOS handling and 800k handling is any better...

I don't think Pmacs have the new age floppy controller found in the AVs. I've
seen people say the chip is called SWIM III. I've seen under the hood of very
few Pmacs though and never had the chance to try any ProDOS 800Ks in 'em.
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