barry@wolman.prime.com (07/14/90)
We have two Macs at work with attached CD-ROM drives (an Apple and a
Toshiba). Both Macs have no problems reading Mac CDs (such as Phil &
Dave's ...) or playing audio CDs. However, neither Mac seems able to
read a non-Mac CD. I borrowed "The Microsoft Bookshelf" CD from a
Netware server and tried it with both Macs. In both cases, I got "This
is not a Macintosh disk ... initialize?" dialog box. I had GUESSED
that a disk from Microsoft would be in ISO/High Sierra format, but I
don't know this for sure. Both systems have the latest CD software from
apple.com FTP site.
What am I doing wrong? Has anyone successfully used ISO/High Sierra CDs
on their Mac? If so, please suggest a title or two that I could try.
Apple CD manual says the message I'm getting indicates the CD is not Mac
or ISO/High Sierra format. What type IS "The Microsoft Bookshelf"?
This is cross posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc, because I thought a PCer might
be more familiar with Microsoft CDs.
Thanks in advance,
Barry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry Wolman | barry@s66.prime.com
Principal Technical Consultant | 500 Old Connecticut Path
Prime Computer | Framingham, MA 01701
| 508/879-2960, ext. 1100
------------------------------------------------------------------------blob@Apple.COM (Brian Bechtel) (07/15/90)
barry@wolman.prime.com writes: >What am I doing wrong? Has anyone successfully used ISO/High Sierra CDs >on their Mac? If so, please suggest a title or two that I could try. Yes, valid High Sierra/ISO 9660 format CD-ROMs work fine on a Macintosh. See below for the explanation. >Apple CD manual says the message I'm getting indicates the CD is not Mac >or ISO/High Sierra format. What type IS "The Microsoft Bookshelf"? Bastardized High Sierra format. When Microsoft pressed the Microsoft Bookshelf CD-ROM, they neglected (actually, the formatting software they used to pre-master the CD-ROM image neglected) to put on some directory information for the Motorola-oriented directories. This means that the CD-ROM isn't in High Sierra format. The CD-ROM contains enough directory information for a MSDOS machine to work with it, but not enough information for a Macintosh or other most-significant-byte first machine. There were several early High Sierra format CD-ROMs that had similar bugs. The company involved in supplying the premastering software has since corrected the problems they had, and modern CD-ROMs pressed using their software work fine on the Macintosh as well as MS-DOS computers. We have a hokey little Macintosh program called CD Validator available via anonymous ftp from apple.com in ~ftp/pub/dts/mac/tools/cd-valid-1-11.hqx and I apologize in advance for the stupid user interface. Maybe someday I'll make it a Macintosh application :-). --Brian Bechtel blob@apple.com
demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu (Darryl E. Marsee) (07/17/90)
In article <42994@apple.Apple.COM> blob@Apple.COM (Brian Bechtel) writes: > >What am I doing wrong? Has anyone successfully used ISO/High Sierra CDs > >on their Mac? If so, please suggest a title or two that I could try. > > Yes, valid High Sierra/ISO 9660 format CD-ROMs work fine on a Macintosh. Well, not if you're running A/UX 2.0 (audio CD's don't work either). Any chance this is going to be fixed in the near future? It's a rather large pain that I have a stack of CD's, mostly in High Sierra format, that I can't access just because I'm running A/UX. Darryl E. Marsee Syracuse University <demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu>