Re: Q: Can I read Macintosh or ProDOS disks on my PC?

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article lazarus.long@adobe.com (Lazarus I. Long) writes...
>
>is it possible to read Mac or ProDOS disks in windows, NT or DOS?

	Absolutely not in the case of 400K and 800K 3.5" floppies.
The Apple II (ProDOS) and Macintosh (MFS/HFS) used a GCR encoding
scheme for these lower density formats, which is a completey 
incompatible with a standard PC floppy drive.

	On the other hand, 1.44MB High Density 3.5" floppies are
now standard on the Macintosh (every model shipped since 1988).
Diskettes formatted as such use MFM encoding, which _is_ compatible
with any PC drive. The 800K/GCR format is still common with Apple II
systems, although in rare cases there are SuperDrive equipped 
machines and they can create 1.44MB ProDOS disks. Both HFS and 
ProDOS use MFM encoding on HD (High Density) 3.5 diskettes.

        I know there is a DOS application which can move files from
HFS <-> MS-DOS (and probably one for Windows) but it's name slips me
at the moment. If a similar program exists for ProDOS, the same can
be accomplished (ProDOS <-> MS-DOS) using your PC.

____________________________________________________________
>Lazarus I. Long                      411 First Avenue South   
>Interface Surgeon                   Seattle, WA  98104-2871
>Dynamic Media Group                      vox (206) 628-2337
>Adobe Systems, Inc.                      fax (206) 343-4240

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca