Re: PLEASE STOP THE MAC AND MICROSOFT MESSAGES

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

> In article shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford) writes...
> 
> >I pulled out my system 1.1 and 3.1 disks to take a look. They both have
> >drivers folders in their system folders. I see nothing to keep anyone from
> >supporting any type of printer they wanted by writing a suitable port driver
> >and printer driver.
> 
>     Apple did not supply APDA documentation or support for writing 
> third party printer drivers at that time, which is why programs like 
> Independence (heh, a fitting name considering the nature of Apple's 
> OS) or Harmonie didn't appear until around System 5.0.4. You were 
> stuck with whatever Apple felt like supporting at that time, and that
> only included the Apple ImageWriter and LaserWriter line of printers.

FYI: the Printer Driver technote was publically released in May 1988,
which  was shortly before System 3.2 was released.  I don't know if the
information it contained was available under NDA or other arrangements
before then.

> >:     It's also funny you should mention that, since Apple OS's refuse
> >: to support SCSI hardrives and CD-ROMs that don't have an Apple ROM
> >: installed in them, even today (MacOS 8 for example). Apple in both
> >: the past and present has always forced people into buying Apple
> >: components whenever possible. Having to depend completely on a
> >: single company is not a good thing (that will be especially true
> >: when the that single company ceases to exist and your left stuck).
> >
> >This is just not so. Apple's Drive Setup can format hard disks from
> >anywhere. It didn't like a Fujitsu I tried with it, but then I didn't
> >expect it to since I read that is doesn't support that brand. Every other
> >disk on hand works pretty as you please. That's everything from a 30 mb
> >Seagate to a 1 gig DEC to a 2 gig 5.25" full height Seagate and a slew of
> >Quantums, none of which came from Apple. And it of course does IDE drives
> >too since most new boxes have them internally unfortunately.

[snip W.A.P. article re requiring Apple firmware in the drive.]

>     I would have thought Apple would have stopped doing monopolistic
> stuff like that by now, it only hurts the company in the end.

They have.  Drive Setup has been able to work with third party drives
for several months (possibly not as far back as MacOS 8.0's release, but
the version that comes with 8.1 can handle my non-Apple Quantum drive.)
It looks for specific brands and/or models that it knows will work
properly.

I'd hardly call this particular item "monopolistic".  There is nothing
stopping you going out and buying a third-party driver such as
Silverlining or HDT.  Many third-party drives are supplied with a
"personal" version of HDT.

Apple simply provide drivers with their system for all hardware they
produce (which is supported by the platform in question).

The primary reason for checking for Apple-badged hard drives is that
some hard drives don't quite comply with the SCSI standard, or don't
work well with the generic driver that Apple provide.  They just played
it safe (for much too long, in my opinion).

In addition, with PC Exchange you can even mount SCSI drives that don't
have a Mac driver at all (e.g. an MS-DOS SCSI drive), provided the drive
works with the generic driver provided by PC Exchange.

> And of course, MacOS isn't the only example of that, the formatter program
> that comes with GS/OS looks for the Apple ROM on hardrives as well.

Only in terms of putting the Mac driver on the disk.  It works fine with
non-Apple drives for IIgs-only support.

(This just reflects the Macintosh handling at the time - the driver had
only been tested with the specific models Apple sold in their machines,
with their patched ROM, so they refuse to install it on anything else.)

> >As for CDs, non support of non Apple CDs is a non issue since no Apple boxes
> >ship without one any more. But there is third party software out there for
> >them just the same.
> 
>     What of Apple IIGS boxes. If I recall correctly, System 6 looks
> for an Apple CDSC, CDSC Plus or CD150 if you want to use the Compact
> Disc NDA player. It may be nice when you plug in Apple hardware and
> get full support, but it'd be a lot nicer if you could plug in things
> from third parties and not have the OS reject them (or at the very
> least, reduce its functionality and features available to the user.
> Your basically penalized for not buying official Apple hardware).

This is a problem with Apple II support being caught in a time warp, and
being wound down at a critical time.

The Apple CDSC, CDSC+ and CD-150 support Apple's proprietary audio CD
command set (which was available before the SCSI-2 standard introduced a
standard command set).  The Apple II software only knows how to deal
with Apple's command set, because it was also written before the general
standard.  Apple never got around to updating any of it after SCSI-2
became available, partly because it was a low priority (very small
installed base of CD-ROM drives on Apple IIs), and their Apple II
resources were being stretched at the time.

All of Apple's later drives use the SCSI-2 CD audio command set, so they
don't work with the IIgs drivers either (for audio).

Data access to CD-ROMs is usually fine, though I did have one obscure
third party CD-ROM drive that wasn't recognised at all (but worked on a
Mac with third-party drivers).  My guess is that it wasn't even
identifying itself as a CD-ROM drive (pre SCSI-2), which is required by
the Apple SCSI card firmware and GS/OS SCSI Manager.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand