lindahl@evax.arl.utexas.edu (Charlie Lindahl) (06/15/90)
About a week ago, I posted a message to comp.sys.mac (among others) regarding the LaCIE SYQUEST 45Meg removeable disk drive. A portion of my posting appears below. I promised a summary of my responses, so contained herein are: 1) A subset of my original posting 2) A mini-summary for those who don't want to read the detail. Detailed responses are being sent to INFO-MAC for archiving there. See INFO-MAC digest for these detailed responses. Thanx to all who responded: George Brett, Fred Schulz, Keith Conover, Colin Ong, Manuel Bouyssou (France!), Maarten Carels (Amsterdam!). Charlie S. Lindahl Automation and Robotics Research Institute University of Texas at Arlington ARPA: lindahl@evax.utarl.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Short synopsis of my original posting: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A friend of mine purchased a SYQUEST 45M removable drive a few months ago. He came over to my place to download some stuff, and we then discovered that the LaCIE formatter/INIT appears not to be compatible with the EHMAN counterparts (EHMAN makes an inexpensive---and reliable---SYQUEST drive). Has anyone else run into this problem? It is NOT meant to be a slight against LaCIE, my friend and I just want to know why there is an apparent compatibility problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mini-summary: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Although the HARDWARE is compatible (i.e., the same cartridges and drive mechanisms are used in the LaCIE and EHMAN products), the formatting procedures used by LaCIE (Silverlining) and EHMAN are NOT compatible. There are TWO INITs and TWO formatting programs available; the INITs do not recognize each other's format techniques (see one of the detailed answers below on the specifics). The upshot: I can have BOTH INITs present, and switch between them with a CDEV at boot time; or I can load either type of disk and boot the Mac. -- Charlie S. Lindahl Automation and Robotics Research Institute University of Texas at Arlington ARPA: lindahl@evax.utarl.edu