kck@wdl1.UUCP (Karl C. Kelley) (04/12/88)
You are not likely to be successful writing a disk on a mac to be read on the pc. Instead you want to be looking at programs which allow you to connect the serial ports or somesuch of the two machines and use a kind of file transfer technique. Numerous means exist to do this and your choice will depend a lot on how frequently you need to do it, the amount of money you can apply (eg TOPS can connect the two together), and on your tolerance for what at first might seem like complicated series of actions to perform. If you can put up with the latter you might want to look into Kermit which can be used for this purpose. The Mac telecommunications program Red Ryder has a workable implementation of Kermit on that side. Whether you escape this with your sanity, and whether many of us who may want to do the same thing if you are successful, depends almost solely on whether the provider of WordPerfect for both machines has provided the means to write the files in such a way that they can support this kind of transfer. If they did not it would in my mind be reason enough to disdain the product on either platform.
blob@Apple.COM (Brian Bechtel) (04/12/88)
In article <4210023@wdl1.UUCP> kck@wdl1.UUCP (Karl C. Kelley) writes: >You are not likely to be successful writing a disk on a mac to be read on >the pc. Dayna, Peripheral Land, and Apple (at least) sell products that allow you to read and write 5 1/4" floppies from a Macintosh. --Brian Bechtel blob@apple.com
jnp@calmasd.GE.COM (John Pantone) (04/16/88)
(Karl C. Kelley) writes: > You are not likely to be successful writing a disk on a mac to be read on > the pc. You will not be able to convince the Mac to write an MSDOS format disk - but you can convince the MSDOS machine (at least a true PC Clone) to read a Mac disk - But don't bother - there are at least 3 ads in this month's PC magazine for programs which read Mac disks on PC's. Some appear to need a board to help out - -- These opinions are solely mine and in no way reflect those of my employer. John M. Pantone @ GE/Calma R&D, 9805 Scranton Rd., San Diego, CA 92121 ...{ucbvax|decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jnp jnp@calmasd.GE.COM GEnie: J.PANTONE
mbk@hpsemc.HP.COM (Miles Kehoe) (04/20/88)
I don't have the specifics I'm afraid, but at the Macworld show last February in San Fran, there was a company showing a 5.25 inch disk drive which hooked into Mac via SCSI and read and wrote IBM format files to the disk. When you first put a IBM disk in the drive, the Mac creates a 'desktop' (invisible) file, so it knows how to icon each file. Then, you simply put the IBM disk in the drive and treat it like any other MAC disk drive. I'd say WordPerfect, which has the ability to write it's own file formats for use on the PC version, should be the choice. As I understand, MS-WORD is not file format compatible, tho you can save a mac file as ascii. Cost for a single 360K drive w/ controller was about $500 I think. Miles