Re: HFS Incompatibility

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.971108010901.21651C-100000@taurus>,
The Mangler  <dayen@sfsu.edu> wrote:
>I wanted to exchange files with a friend that uses a PC.  When I
>formatted a disk as MS-DOS on my GS using MS-DOS utilities, his
>computer didn't recognize it, and when he reformatted the disk to MS-DOS
>on his PC, my computer didn't recognize it.  What is going on?

   If you are going to use 3.5" disks to trade data between an Apple
II and a PC, you will need disk hardware on one or both sides beyond
the standard issue hardware. Normal GS 3.5" drives only write 800K
disks; those are totlly unreadable by PCs expecting 720K disks. On the
GS side, you will need one (you can have more, but that's probably
overkill) of the following: Apple II Superdrive (1.44MB) with
Superdrive controller, Bluedisk w/ PC 3.5" drive, PC Transporter,
Floptical Drive, and possibly one or two others. 

   If you have the appropriate hardware, and it is still not working,
make sure you have the latest MS-DOS utilities, and read the
documentation for the author's email address-- he's still developing
it, and would really like it for everyone to pay the shareware $ by
having a working copy.

>Also, I formatted another disk into a Mac format on my GS but it showed up
>on a PowerPC as a disk with no storage space available.  So, I reformatted
>the disk again into a Mac format on a PowerPC this time, and it worked
>fine on both machines.

   This is due to Apple's silly insistence on a Macintosh 'driver'
partition on the drive before it's seen by a Mac. [They could have
made this *OPTIONAL* (the way it should have been from the start, but
they were trying to gouge the consumer by making them buy hardware
with the fruity logo on it or get their cut from a few selected OEMs)
at any time in the past 5 years or more, but they seem to have been
concentrating on more esoteric gunk than basic usability. 

   After you formatted it from the mac, the driver partition was
there, allowing the mac to see it. The GS is omnivorous, the way it
should be. [As long as your hardware supports the disk media, you
should be able to at least see the partitions and have an educated
guess come out as to what filesystem type it is, and mounted if it's a
supported type. (And docs for writing more filesystems should also be
available!)]

Nathan Mates
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