Last updated: May 14, 1997
Latest version: 3.0.8
Befuddled by this? Check out QuickestMirror!
Disk Charmer lets you perform the following tasks:
Disk Charmer is easy and convenient to use:
If you have a Mac with a PowerPC processor and either SpeedEmulator or RAMDoubler or both, please let me know whether it crashes or not.
Update: Tech Note 1096 by Lenae Rowland reports a compatibility problem between System 7.6.1 and Speed Doubler 2. Check out Connectix for details, or this page on MacFixIt.
Update: The following appeared in Macintouch on February 20, 1997:
Craig DeRose reports that OnTrack's Disk Manager Mac is not certified for use with System 7.5.5 or later:"I just got off the phone with OnTrack's Tech support for Disk Manager Mac. I was asking about the new disk formatting requirements needed with Mac OS 7.6. Tech Support stated that DMM 4.02c was tested and compatible with system 7.5.3. No testing or updates were planned for the product, and they could not recommend their product for use with System 7.6."
Under the J2-7.5.2 system, Disk Charmer 3.0.2 complained: "An error occurred, could not read the disk into memory" after trying to read the disk, and the disk image was not created. Under the U.S.-7.5.3-Rev.2 system, the disk reading proceeded fine, and Disk Charmer worked fine, except for the (now familiar on the PB5300) message: "Although the disk has been correctly read, the presence of low-level errors indicates that this disk may fail in the future" was (still) shown. Back to the J2-7.5.2 System, Disk Charmer was still unable to read this 800K disk.In the end, I highly recommend to install Revision 2 (or, even better, System 7.5.5) if appropriate for your Mac model.So, 7.5.3-Rev.2 System handles things better than J2-7.5.2. I don't know what makes the difference, but perhaps the mention (in the TidBITS#332 article) of the changes in the Dynamic Recompiling emulator has something to do with it?
Also, I noticed the Revision 2 Update resource files include a new '.Sony' DRVR resource. Maybe this has to do with it? Or, maybe this is just a fix concerning the following other paragraph in the Revision 2 Update readme doc:
If you have a PowerBook 500 series or Duo series computer with the PowerPC Upgrade Card installed, PC-formatted floppy disks that were formatted on your computer may be unreadable in DOS or Windows computers. This software fixes this problem.
Please note: it does not matter what selections you make in the Apple Menu Options control panel; the problem will persist until the panel is disabled completely by moving it out of the System Folder.
If the evil Apple Menu Options is installed, Disk Charmer may unleash an orgy of hard disk activity even though floppies are all that are being formatted. As soon as the Mac starts the initialization process on the floppy it would also start reading from the hard disk, a process which prevents any other activity from taking place. Then, when the floppy is ejected after the initialization, another hard disk scan may take place. Each of these scans might take a minute or more effectively locking up the Mac during the entire initialization process and a minute after. Apparently the feature which remembers the most recent applications, servers and documents requires a complete read of the hard disk and is triggered somehow by Disk Charmer and Norton Backup (and who knows what else). There is a host of third party utilities implementing the Hierarchical menus just fine and not causing the hard disk activity which Apple Menu Options does.
This page was last built with Frontier on a Macintosh on Sat, Jun 7, 1997 at 12:15:47 by
Fabrizio Oddone, fab@kagi.com