MountEm is an FKey used to mount (and unmount) SCSI volumes.
This doc describes version 1.7 of MountEm.
Even though MountEm is NOT public domain, I choose to give it away for free, and so can you. Just make sure that you do NOT charge anything for it, and that you give away unmodified copies and that you include this document (unmodified). You may upload MountEm to your favorite BBS as long as you follow the same rules (unmodified, includes this document). NON-PROFIT user groups may include MountEm on the disks they sell. PROFIT groups that sell disks to make money for themselves and their companies (such as EduCorp) may NOT include MountEm without my WRITTEN permission.
MountEm is a standard FKey, and comes from the factory (me) set to number 5. You can use FKey Mover to install it, and you can renumber and rename it to your hearts content. It works just fine with Suitcase II. If you are using ResEdit to install it, you can ignore all the resources you find in the distribution file (except the FKEY resource, of course); they are there to allow the Finder to show a distinctive icon and provide version info.
MountEm was inspired by Paul Mercer’s SCSI control panel device. Much of the code in MountEm is a result of my seeing Paul’s code, and MountEm is released with Paul’s permission. John Mitchell also provided much help (and code) when asked, including code used in his (indispensable) Fedit Plus disk and file editor.
I designed MountEm to use with my Syquest 45meg removable hard drive, but it should work for any SCSI drive (and it works for floppies too). Though an INIT was provided with my drive so I could boot without a cartridge loaded, and still be able to insert a cartridge later and have it show up on the desktop, I often didn’t want the SCSI bus polled every half second while the Syquest driver looked for a disk insert event. (The blinking lights were making me nuts).
MountEm, like Paul Mercer’s SCSI CDev, was designed for those of you who hack with your SCSI drives; it will mount volumes on drives you hook up after you power up, and will mount Syquest cartridges even if the Syquest driver isn’t loaded. It should work as well with all the removable SCSI drives, including the 10 and 20 meg MegaDrives (from Jasmine). MountEm will not double mount an already mounted Jasmine volume, unlike Paul’s SCSI CDev, which will. This is not a fault with SCSI CDev; there is a bug in the Jasmine driver that MountEm knows about. MountEm 1.7 also deals with quirks in many vendor's drivers which Paul’s SCSI CDev doesn’t. If SCSI CDev or earlier versions of MountEm did not work with your vendor's driver, try version 1.7; it will probably work.
MountEm will NOT mount remote server volumes/drives on AppleShare; only local drives.
MountEm will NOT mount CD Roms.
DANGEROUS(!!!?!!!) POWER USER FEATURE:
If you hold the control or caps lock key down when you fire MountEm, the FKey will present you with a dialog that allows you to cycle (once) through all the SCSI disks connected to your Mac. The first button in the dialog is labeled “Eject” if that drive has removable media, or “Unmount” if it doesn’t. The “Eject” actually does both an eject and an unmount. If you have a drive that is partitioned into multiple volumes, ALL may be unmounted (it depends on how that driver handles the unmount immediate command). MountEm will even unmount a disk if there are open files on that volume. (This is what makes the eject and unmount feature so dangerous). MountEm is smart enough not to allow you to unmount the drive that has the active System file on it, and that drive won’t show up as you cycle thru the drives; MountEm WILL, however, allow you to unmount the volume with the current application on it (you’ve been warned…). The “Drive” button will present you with each of the drives, in turn, once. The “Cancel” button does what you should expect it to. At this time, there are no keyboard equivalents for the buttons, if you think there should be, drop me a note, and don’t forget to tell me what they should be (EG. The drive button should be a tab, etc. Remember that return and enter are considered the default response [I’ll outline the button]; I DON’T think that Eject/Unmount should be the default though…).
I added this feature so I could unmount fixed (non-removable) drives, and so that I could eject and unmount my (Syquest) removable disk while I had Desktop Manager installed and running. Desktop Manager is part of the AppleShare package and is very useful to those of us who have very large volumes on-line. One of the “trade-offs” of using the Desktop Manager is that it leaves two open files on every volume, and volumes can’t be ejected and unmounted (normally) if there are open files on them. HOWEVER, if an application is open, or has an open document, and you eject and unmount that volume, you could trash the application and the document. If you are running under MultiFinder, this condition is easily overlooked, so BE CAREFUL if you use the eject and unmount feature! This was all before Finder 6.1.4 (which comes with System 6.0.4). The eject/unmount feature of MountEm is no longer needed because Finder 6.1.4 and later Finders are much more aware of Desktop Manager, and know how to eject/unmount volumes that have open Desktop Manager files. USE THE FINDER TO UNMOUNT VOLUMES, (by dragging the volume into the trash), NOT MountEm, UNLESS YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON, AND YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
(Note for QuicKeys users: If you want to use a QuicKey to fire MountEm, AND you also want to use the control key (or caps lock key) feature to get to UnMountEm, you’ll have to create two QuicKey entries, one for the key you choose, and one for the key plus the control key (or the caps lock key). Both the QuicKeys you create should cause MountEm to be fired).
