Well partial but at least it can be made to work within certain parameters.
Firstly my thanks to all who made suggestions but especially to Mac guru Eric Eames - may his beard never wither - [ Digital-Photography Ltd 0207 689 3400 ] who made some vital suggestions and helped me test the drive in question and sort out the process.
For those who have lost the thread the requirement was to upload data from a Mac onto a pocket drive and then be able to deliver that data both to another Mac or a PC. This to be accomplished preferably without the need for the PC user to load any software to read the Mac files or the pocket drive. Seemed simple until I tried to do it...!
Here is the work round.
Firstly it will not work with Windows 95 or NY as these do not support USB so if the recipient PC is running these then you will almost certainly have to use software - Mac Opener probably.
The pocket drive needs to be formatted in MS/DOS but has to be done in OS9 > Special > Erase Disk > Format.
In OSX the Disk Utility > Erase > Load OS9 drivers option does indeed create a disk which PCs can see but they are not able to run it so there is clearly a backward compatibility problem here in that the drivers which OS9 loads are different from those which OSX calls "OS9 drivers".
Having created a MS/DOS format pocket drive one simply loads the data files making sure they have relevant file suffixes.
It is then simply a matter of plugging in and getting the PC to install new hardware: it may be that the PC will be unhappy with drives created off older Mac with USB1 but they will work, albeit more slowly. It might be that the OSX driver problem is also to do with USB1 but we have not tested that possibility.
Others may come up with alternative suggestions but we have at least managed to get some way to solving the problem but unless Mac do a fix on the drivers in OSX we are going to need OS9 for a little while yet.
Cheers
Mike St Maur Sheil
T> + 44 [0] 1367 870 276 F> + 44 [0] 1367 870 641 M> + 44 [0] 7860 508 679
E> triffid[at]macunlimited.net W> sheilphoto.co.uk
=============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
