Re: Apple //c+ w/Apple HD20 hard drive

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <NEWTNews.859185774.28821.dr7zyq@nidlink.com>,
 <dr7zyq@rand.nidlink.com> wrote:
>
>Actually, the two are hardly comprable.
>
>First, the HD20 plugs into the floppy drive connector on a Mac, the same 
>connector into which standard floppy drives plug.  Those same drives can be 
>plugged into a //c+ and used as secondary drives.  In addition, the HD20 can 
>be formatted using standard formatting software, so long as the software has 
>the ability to set aside bad sectors.  Standard System 6 software, of course, 
>does not do that; it requires a perfect disk.  That is why there are so many 
>shareware formatters for the System 6 Macs.  System 7 does incorporate the 
>ability to close out bad sectors.  So it is not difficult to believe that 
>because the floppy drive ports accept the same drives and it doesn't require 
>special software, then maybe the drive could be used on both machines.  As I 
>say, the only problem that I ran into was that when I tried to format the 
>drive, it saw it as write protected.  Therefore, one must wonder if there is a 
>way to get around the apparent "write protection" road block.

The fact that the plugs are the same has no bearing on whether they can work
or not. External 400K, beige 800K, and HD 20s all have DB19 connectors,
yet none are compatible with IIs. Later models of 5.25 drives have the
same connector, yet they don't work on Macs. Ditto Unidisk 3.5 drives. Heck,
super serial cards and SCSI cards both have DB25 connectors, but you can't 
interchange 'em, to take an extreme example.

Bottom line is, only stuff designed to work with IIs will work, regardless
of whether it can physically connect up. Like I said, only Chinook hard disks
will work.

>On the other hand, I would have to be a idiot to believe that I could flap my 
>arms and fly.

The point here is it's generally not a good idea to just try something merely
because someone says it might work. I wouldn't risk roasting my hardware 
without getting a definitive answer. And in this case, that answer is no
dice.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com