[WinMac] Re: Apple Drives

David G. Story(bigapple[at]age.net)
Tue, 22 Dec 1998 00:01:56 -0500

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Mr Thorstad got it right.

>HD Setup is not very picky about SCSI drives since probably your 80% were
>all made for Macs. And there were fewer companies actually making drives.
>Apple's software is picky about IDE, though. And Apple has always had a
>short list, like NT now has, of hardware. For plug n play capability.

Mr Johnston did too.

>Actually this isn't completely the case, else that Micropolis 4gb drive I
>bought at onsale (nary an apple logo in sight) wouldn't have worked...or any
>of the other various drives I've had. Apple's Drive utility is specific to
>particular _models_ of SCSI drive,

However, unless I'm misunderstanding something, it appears that Mr Lee did not.

>Stupid Apple ROMS! (Sorry, but it annoys me that Apple just won't buy
>the rights to the fine FWB product and then give it away, instead of
>forcing us to use "Apple-approved" drives with Apple HD Setup.)

This has nothing to do with Apple ROMs at all. An Apple branded drive does
not have Apple ROMs. It has everything to do with code written into Apple's
SCSI formatter which you can see with ResEdit. If your particular drive
type isn't included in that list and doesn't include certain code, you
can't use Apple's formatter, simple as that. However, if you are a bit
inventive (or foolhardy), you can hack the code and add your own hard drive
descriptions which will make Apple's SCSI formatter recognize your
particular brand. I've done it, and of course, Apple doesn't recommend this
:-) When you buy an Apple drive, you buy one which they have formatted with
their particular driver. If you overwrite their driver, you're dead. Then
you're into FWB or Drive 7 or someone else's (which I'm sure most
consultants already know, at least up until this new driver came out
anyway).

Also the new Apple formatter (v1.6.1) will recognize practically everything
except for some of the larger sized drives (over 9 gigs). For these I've
had to use a 3rd party formatter. I don't know about v1.6.2 yet.

BTW, you might be interested to know that Apple pays Prosoft to write their
formatter now (V1.6.1). I believe, although I am not sure, that they may
have used Charis Engineering in the past. Prosoft are the guys who make
Drive 7, probably the best and most reliable SCSI formatter that I have
ever used.

Also, in my opinion, FWB's product has been less than stellar on occasion,
over the period of it's life (and I have been in it since v1.0.) It's like
the little boy with the curl, when he was good, he was very very good, and
when he was bad, he was awful.

David G. Story
President
Big Apple

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• Next in thread: Dan Schwartz: "[WinMac] Re: Apple Drives"

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Dec 21 1998 - 21:05:32 PST