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Re: Magneto optical drives and other issues
On Thu, 19 Oct 1995, zinc wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Oct 1995, Stephen Su wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 19 Oct 1995, zinc wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 19 Oct 1995, Stephen Su wrote:
> > >
> >
> > It seems like there should still be a way around it. CDROM drivers for
> > DOS/Win machines (proprietary, ATAPI, and SCSI) all work with Mac
> > formatted CDROMs, even though the DOS drivers weren't written with the Mac
> > format in mind. The same thing's true about BIOSes and ASPI drivers with
> > regards to SCSI hard drives. I don't know anything about how Executor
> > manages to read Mac media on PC hardware, so I'll defer to ARDI to say
> > whether this is an Executor limitation or driver limitation. (BTW, I'm
> > using ADVASPI.SYS from Advansys and UNI_ASP.SYS from Corel SCSI 2.0 as
> > the drivers in DOS/Win 3.1.)
>
> i guess i was not totally clear. the driver for the DOS machine can't
> read the Mac _file system_ and, the Mac init cannot read the DOS file
> system.
>
> the CD-ROM file system, however is a standard, something like ISO-9600 or
> something like that. thus, mac's and DOS machines can (sort of)
> interoperate with these, as long as the files are in a format recognized
> by both.
Except Mac CDs aren't ISO-9600 format, but Executor can read them. I've
tried a Mac CD-ROM that DOS 6.22 and Windows 95 *cannot* read but
Executor can. The same should hold true for Mac formatted hard drives.
(i.e. They can't be seen from DOS or Windows 95 but can be seen from
Executor.)
> obviously, a DOS executable on a CD-ROM will not work on a Mac and
> vice-versa...
I don't think the vice-versa is true. I've run Mac programs directly off a
Mac CD-ROM in Executor.
> i don't know how executor reads the floppy drive directly, but they must
> do something, esp under linux, since i can't even mount a Mac floppy.
Exactly. Executor can read the binary format of Mac media (e.g.
floppies, CD-ROMs, and hard drives) that otherwise can't be seen from the
DOS/Win machine. Any clarification from ARDI?
---
Stephen Su ssu@garnet.berkeley.edu
References: