ricko@well.UUCP (Richard J Otter) (09/25/87)
Is anyone working on a utility to read/write MacIntosh disks on the Amiga ? Is it even possible given the variable speed of the Mac drives? , If all else fails, I'd like to try buying a Mac drive and controlling it with the Amiga, any suggestions ? Using incompatable formats at work and home makes life miserable !
NETOPRHM@NCSUVM.BITNET (Hal Meeks) (09/25/87)
ST to be about 70% compatable with a mac. It is called "Magic Sac", and
it is pretty amazing. They are currently working on a "black box" that
will hook up between a ST's external drive and the main system, allowing
it to directly read and write _800k_ Mac disks. 400k disks will probably
never be supported, for a several reasons.
They are also working on a version of the Magic Sac itself for the
Amiga, which should be out by the end of this year. Whether or not they
will have a similar interface for the Amiga remains to be seen. Hopefully
they will, because right now users of the Magic Sac have three formats to
deal with: ST, Mac and Magic.
I want one!
Hal
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (10/14/87)
In article <4028@well.UUCP> ricko@well.UUCP (Richard J Otter) writes: > > Is anyone working on a utility to read/write MacIntosh disks on the Amiga ? > Is it even possible given the variable speed of the Mac drives? , > If all else fails, I'd like to try buying a Mac drive and controlling it > with the Amiga, any suggestions ? Using incompatable formats at work and home > makes life miserable ! There is a real question as to whether this is possible without some kind of hardware to help out. A while back some brave and clever people announced that they thought they could make it work via software, but I haven't heard anything lately. Anybody heard any good news? -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: out to lunch... Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
dclemans@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Dave Clemans) (10/19/87)
Data Pacific, the company that did the Mac emulator for the Atari ST, has come out with a product that lets Mac disks be read on the ST. With appropriate driver software that box should work fine on the Amiga. What their hardware is is a small Z80 based computer system that sits on the floppy drive "bus" and looks at the raw data lines as they come off the drive. Then some other processing is done (correcting for speed differences, etc.?) and then the fully decoded Mac disk data is sent to another port (on the ST I think they use the parallel port, but I'm not sure). dgc
cp46@sdcc15.UUCP (Hartford) (10/21/87)
In article <984@dclemans.mntgfx.MENTOR.COM> dclemans@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Dave Clemans) writes: > >Data Pacific, the company that did the Mac emulator for the Atari ST, has come out >with a product that lets Mac disks be read on the ST. With appropriate driver >software that box should work fine on the Amiga. > I spoke with the folks from Data Pacific at a recent Atari show in Glendale, CA, and they assured me that they had a version of their Mac emulator working (sort of) on the Amiga, with the Amiga drive reading and writing Mac formatted diskettes! No box necessary! The monochrome display, however, won't be as nice as it is on the ST, where many people use the super-high resolution monochrome monitor already. The Amiga version will have two options: 1) interlace, and 2) leave out every other scan line. I'm not quite sure how this second method would work, but that's all I could get out of them. Apparently, they don't want to talk about it until its ready to be released. (I can't understand why not :-) -- Stephen Hartford // cp46%sdcc15@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu people unclear on the concept: \\ // am10fme%sdcc2@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu "power without the price" \// ma176abn%sdcc19@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu
bryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt) (10/22/87)
In article <363@sdcc15.UUCP> cp46@sdcc15.UUCP (Hartford,Stephen) writes: >In article <984@dclemans.mntgfx.MENTOR.COM> > dclemans@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Dave Clemans) writes: >>Data Pacific, the company that did the Mac emulator for the Atari ST, has >>come out >>with a product that lets Mac disks be read on the ST. With appropriate driver >>software that box should work fine on the Amiga. < <I spoke with the folks from Data Pacific at a recent Atari show in <Glendale, CA, and they assured me that they had a version of their Mac <emulator working (sort of) on the Amiga, with the Amiga drive <reading and writing Mac formatted diskettes! No box necessary! < <The monochrome display, however, won't be as nice as it is on the ST, <where many people use the super-high resolution monochrome monitor already. <The Amiga version will have two options: 1) interlace, and 2) leave out <every other scan line. Or 3) Go out an purchase a special monitor, just like the Atari folks did. Unlike the Atari, you can have both hooked up at the same time. I've only found long persentence monochrome monitors in Green and Amber... had hope for white phospor. Oh, well, green is the second favorite. Oh, you say you don't have a A500 or A2000 with monochrome port? Well, um, it just is not going to look quite as nice... sorry!. |\ /| . Ack! (NAK, SOH, EOT) {o O} . bryce@hoser.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!hoser!bryce (") "I would have promised those terrorists a TRIP TO DISNEYLAND if it would U have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme." -- preliminary draft of Ollie's testimony
childs@cadnetix.UUCP (David Childs) (10/23/87)
In article <363@sdcc15.UUCP>, cp46@sdcc15.UUCP (Hartford) writes: > In article <984@dclemans.mntgfx.MENTOR.COM> > dclemans@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Dave Clemans) writes: >>Data Pacific, the company that did the Mac emulator for the Atari ST, has >>come out with a product that lets Mac disks be read on the ST. With >>appropriate driver software that box should work fine on the Amiga. > >I spoke with the folks from Data Pacific at a recent Atari show in >Glendale, CA, and they assured me that they had a version of their Mac >emulator working (sort of) on the Amiga, with the Amiga drive >reading and writing Mac formatted diskettes! No box necessary! From what I heard, the reading of MAC disks is only with the ST version, and that includes the disk-controller unit being needed. I would think that the same kind of box could be made for the Amiga as for the ST, but Central Coast Software, the makers of Dos2Dos and Disk2Disk, havn't announced any Mac2Amiga converters yet so I would be surprized if it can be done easily. They told me that the orignal version of Amiga Magic Sac would come out with a Data Pacific TM format just like the ST has. It might be nice to have both the ST and Amiga version of floppy formats be compatible. >The monochrome display, however, won't be as nice as it is on the ST, >where many people use the super-high resolution monochrome monitor already. >The Amiga version will have two options: 1) interlace, and 2) leave out >every other scan line. I'm not quite sure how this second method would >work, but that's all I could get out of them. I would think that leaving out every other scan line would be just that. It sounds hard to do, because the whole MAC screen would still be drawn to RAM, but only half would be displayed. A scrolling super-bitmap might be a nice approach. The other, but probably worse approach would be to just have a small 640x200 MAC screen. User selectability would be nice. > Stephen Hartford // cp46%sdcc15@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu > people unclear on the concept: \\ // am10fme%sdcc2@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu > "power without the price" \// ma176abn%sdcc19@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu David Childs Cadnetix Corp. (303) 444-8075 childs@cadnetix.UUCP