Might try scrounging up a 512meg MO drive on eBay that will also read the 256meg disks.
I've found that it pays to use the exact same formatter on all removable media, with the exception of Zip disks. If you've used a 3rd party formatter on your hard drive, use it on ALL your hard drives as well as removable media. That way you won't have disk driver conflicts. :) Another thing to try is connect the MO drive to PC with a SCSI controller that has its own BIOS. Then spend a while doing a low level format on all your MO disks, then from DOS or Win format them FAT16. Back on the Mac, boot with an MO disk in the drive. When it fires up, the Mac will ask if you wanna erase the MO disk. Do it and it will quickly become HFS standard. That should place the Apple (or 3rd party driver on your boot drive) onto the MO disk. Try it with one disk and test it a whole lot. If it stays stable then spend the time on the rest of the disks. If it won't "keep" then it's likely the drive is just a flaky POS! I've never had a bit of trouble with my 3.5" 128meg and 3.5" 320meg MO drives and disks. My 128 drive is a Ricoh and the two 230's are Fujistu. All my disks of both sizes are Sony brand. Anyway, there definately is a voodoo to removable storage on the Mac as weird as SCSI voodoo can get at times. :) Especially don't try using a removable disk formatted with HDT 4.xx in a Mac that has the HDT 3.xx driver on the hard drive. *CRASH* I've had it crash doing it the other way too. :P To mount recalcitrant drives, fixed or removable, I've had the best of luck with the mounter from an older version of FWB Hard Disk Toolkit Personal Edition. It even works with the Basilisk II emulator! Quite often it can "see" volumes that other mounters like Mount Everything and SCSI Probe refuse to believe exists. If that can't mount a volume I usually give it up for lost. :( What's annoying is when that mounter _can_ see a volume nothing else will but still refuses to mount it. ===== http://www.junkscience.com "All the Junk that's fit to Debunk!" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage http://sports.yahoo.com/ -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Vintage Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml> The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
