Re: Help with IIgs

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <32B26DB3.7D8F@unixg.ubc.ca>, Ben Lai  <benlai@unixg.ubc.ca> wrote:
>> Try to get Iomega's Zip Drive. It comes with 100 MB disks and allows you
>> to easily exchange large amounts of data with other Zip drive users.

>Since GS/OS 6.0.1 can read MS-DOS files, so I guess a IIgs can read both
>MS-DOS or Mac formatted Zip disk, is this correct?  

   Mac formatted Zip disks are fine, but I think that PC Zip disks
could be a problem. PCs had to be different and partition scsi drives
differently than Apples [not sure if partitioning was ANSI spec'd and
one or both sides decided to flout it, or what], so I'd think that the
SCSI card might not recognize the partitions. If the SCSI card can
deal with the Zip's formatting, you should be able to use the MS-DOG
FST to read it.

   Thanks to Win95 going and changing the file structure a bit at the
start (the VFAT long filename extensions), you could probably read off
files from this disk no problem, but the MS-DOS FST would muck up the
VFAT tables if you tried to write to it. [It'd come out mostly ok on
the PC side, but Norton95 or another disk checker would want to fix up
the disk] Should you have Win95 Service Pack #2 installed with the
FAT32 support, that'll probably store data to a Zip disk in a way that
the MS-DOS FST couldn't deal with at all.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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