--- On Sun, 12/18/11, Jake <[email protected]> wrote: > 1) a suitable driver and software package for a Castlewood Orb 2.2GB
The "quick and dirty" method to get most any removable disk drive working with a classic Mac System/OS. 1. Hook the drive up to a PC 2. If your target Mac format will be HFS, format the disk to FAT16 3. If your target Mac format will be HFS+, format the disk to FAT32 4. Connect the drive to your Mac, turn the drive power on and insert the disk 5. When the Mac asks if you want to initialize or eject the disk, choose initialize 6. In a few seconds you'll have the disk in Mac format with the Apple disk driver installed, in spite of it not having special Apple recognized firmware 7. A Mac does not need special drivers for removable disks (except CD/DVD) *if* you have a disk in the drive during boot. It will load drivers off the disk(s) into RAM and keep them in memory so you can swap disks. Using this method it is best to have all the disks for a specific drive formatted with the same driver. The low level filesystem structures of FAT16/HFS and FAT32/HFS+ are either identical or close enough that a Mac has no problem quickly overwriting the higher level stuff. I've done this with SyQuest and Iomega removable drives and I've also done it with hard drives the same way. Format them then let your Mac initialize the unknown drive. I've even done this to use a real hard drive with the Basilisk II Mac emulator, but I only used FDISK to make it a single FAT16 partition then used Mac OS 8.1 in the emulator to initialize it. That worked because without the high level formatting Windows 98SE couldn't see and "latch onto" the drive. A good and cheap SCSI controller for the PC is an Adaptech 2940 single channel, narrow SCSI PCI. Don't get a U (ultra), W (wide) or UW or U2W because you'll either have to use the internal 50 pin narrow connector or get a Wide/Ultra to Narrow external adapter. Some of the Wide/Ultra models might not have the narrow internal connector. You'll need a high density 50 pin to DB25 or CEN50 cable for external connections. The Adaptech's built in low level format also works to clean up problems that can be caused by formatting software on a Mac. Once I had FWB HDT 4 screw up creating a RAID and nothing I could find for Mac software could do anything with any of the drives, until I low level formatted them with the Adaptech on a PC. -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
