home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!ames!agate!spool.mu.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!math.utah.edu!cadehp17.eng.utah.edu!sclawson
- From: sclawson@cadehp17.eng.utah.edu (Stephen Clawson)
- Subject: Re: Macintosh format disks
- Sender: bowman@math.utah.edu (Pieter Bowman)
- Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 20:16:58 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Dec13.201658.7488@math.utah.edu>
- Organization: /n/hellgate/usr/new/lib/news/cnews/organization
- References: <723946396snx@weasel.demon.co.uk>
- Lines: 37
-
- In article <723946396snx@weasel.demon.co.uk> agc@weasel.demon.co.uk writes:
- >In article <1992Dec8.022743.2634@news.cs.brandeis.edu> dan@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Dan Schwarz) writes:
- >>
- >> This is correct as far as I know; the Mac 400k and 800k disks are written
- >> using GCR which probably requires different hardware (IBMs use MFM format.)
- >> Luckily, Apple wised up and made their 1440k drives use MFM which means the
- >> hardware is essentially compatible. All that you need is the proper driver
- >> software.
- >>
- >> -Dan
- >
- >But Dave Small's 'Spectre' Mac emulator runs on Atari ST's which use an MFM floppy
- >controller (and standard 80-track mfm drive) which can both read and write
- >MFS, HFS and DOS disks. Perhaps someone should beg the info from him? :-)
- >
- >
- >Cheers,
- >
- >- Alan.
-
- you seem to have forgotten that to read mac disks with spectre,
- Dave had to include some pretty funky hardware in the cartridge to
- handle the variable bit rate comming from the drive. the happy
- cartridge (i think it was called the discovery cart or something, from
- happy systems) could also read mac disks if i remember right. the
- idea here is that instead of having a fixed bit rate and a variable
- speed drive, you have a fixed speed drive and a variable bit rate. i
- really doubt that stock hardware in a pc would be able to handle this,
- considering that they can't even handle amiga format disks. there
- have been a couple cards for the pc, like the Copy II PC option board
- that can read mac disks, maybe you could write some sort of software
- to use it under linux. =)
-
- steve
- // Stephen Clawson sclawson@cadehp0.eng.utah.edu
- // University of Utah c-csn@cayley.math.utah.edu
-
-