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My Odessey column yesterday on floppy disk support in OS X generated a lot of interest, and letters. Thanks for all the information and suggestions.

In the particular case of my VST SuperDisk expansion bay drive module for my Pismo PowerBook, I've discovered that the hangup seems to be the lack of OS X driver software for that drive. I've done some further research and investigation, and both floppy and SuperDisk driver software actually is built into OS X, so I was mistaken in my surmise that this is an OS X problem per se. The statement on the VST support site that "The SuperDisk Drive for 1999 and 2000 PowerBook G3 is not supported on Mac OS X 10.2," temporarily put me off-track. It's not incorrect, but it makes it sound as if the problem is OS X and not their lack of proprietary driver software for OS X.

Presumably, SmartDisk, which now owns VST, could write an OS X driver for this device, but hasn't bothered. Indeed, the latest driver software downloadable from their Web site refers specifically to OS 8.6 in the Read Me, although it works with up to OS 9.2.2.

Interestingly, two readers report that floppies work fine with the VST Super disk drives in their Wall Street PowerBooks.

As I noted yesterday, various USB external SuperDisk drives are supported by OS X. In "Mastering Mac OSX ," Todd Stauffer says that some, but not all, USB floppy drives will work with OS X. He also notes that if you need to read the contents of the floppy in OS X, one workaround is to boot into OS 9, create a disk image of a floppy using the Disk Copy utility, then read the disk image after booting back into OS X. Sounds cumbersome, but I guess it could be useful in certain situations.

Todd also reports that floppy drive support in OS X, even when it works, can be very slow, and that there doesn't seem to be much that can be done about it. Both Stauffer and David Pogue say that Mac formatted floppies mount faster in OS X than DOS formatted floppies do, but either will work.

One reader suggested that the problem I'm having might be that the floppy needs to be formatted HFS +. However, OS X can read HFS Standard formatted disks -- it just can't boot from an HFS Standard volume, so I don't think that's it. It looks like unless SmartDisk decides to support the VST expansion bay drive with an OS X driver (doubtful, since it's a discontinued product) I'm out of luck using that drive in OS X. To bad. It works nicely in OS 9

Floppy support in OS X

From S J Nielsen

Hi Charles,

Your frustration with Apple for ignoring floppy support in OS X, even though it apparently is "doable," mirrors my own frustration on two fronts. I too still use floppies to move files from my Wallstreet to a Powerbook 1400 and a Powerbook 100 (which I still use as my portable writing machine because I don't worry about losing it--the Wallstreet never leaves my desk). The 1400 and Wallstreet are now networked together, but OS X killed my neat little system for keeping the 100 up-to-date with my latest work.

Secondly, I also own a Stylewriter II, which still does everything I want it to very reliably. Soon after installing Jaguar, I discovered that serial printers are no longer supported. However, a little investigation on the Web informed me that the Printing Service in OS X Jaguar is just a fancy face for the Common Unix Printing Service (CUPS), which DOES support serial ports. Apple made a conscious choice to leave this part of the service out. All of the necessary components are available on the Web for the adventurous user to install, but it's just a little more complicated than I'm willing to get into.

I'm not suggesting that Apple is obligated to support my machine with its newest OS, but If Apple is going to claim that my Wallstreet Series II is officially supported, then I expect all functionality of my machine to actually be supported. Otherwise, drop it from the list and leave it to the Mac community to figure out workarounds. At least I would know to keep my expectations low if I chose to try it anyway.

In the end, I've decided that OS X isn't better or worse than OS 9; they're just different ways of accomplishing the same thing, and for me, OS 9 is the better tool.

Get well soon,
Steve.

Hi Steve;

I agree. Apple has no imperative obligation to support anything, but it should be clearly stated that OS X support for some of the older "officially supported" machines is qualified and limited.

While my floppy support issue with the VST drive *appears* to be due to the lack of an OS X software driver for the product, which isn't Apple's fault, the lack of support for, say, the internal floppy drives in the beige G3 desktops certainly is, since apparently third-party hacks are available to faciliity.

Form a purely functional standpoint, I would have to agree that at least for these older G3 machines, OS 9 is indeed a much more efficient tool than OS X for getting one's work done. The sort of work I do, anyway. I persevere in OS X first for journalistic reasons, and also because I'm becoming addicted to certain software or sofware features that are not available in OS 9. However, booting back into OS 9 after a week or so in OS X is like cutting in a turbocharger. No waiting for every little thing!

Charles

OS X and floppies

From Bill Landry

Hello Charles,

I noticed today in your Odyssey 285 that you are having trouble with floppy drive support in OSX. If the error that you received is what I think it is, the solution is to just format the disk, using Disk Utility as an HFS+ disk. OS X can not read any disk that is formatted as a straight HFS disk. Remember the " Where have all my files Gone? " with the switch to OS 9, I think that this is a similar problem that reformatting as HFS+ will solve for you. I have a Superdrive, USB Floppy that I use once in a blue moon that works fine with floppies.

I hope this is of help to you.

I enjoy your columns and make sure to read each day.

I have been a very happy and fortunate, user of OSX even with the beta version, there were the odd glitch early on but everything has been stable and serviceable for me for all that I do and then some. I first installed OSX beta on a G4 450AGP then when I got my iMac G4 flat Panel a year ago last November I never looked back. My machines are always production and test machines and I have a tendency to push them a bit now and then even to installing and testing a good deal of beta and even alpha applications. I admit to having been bitten a couple of times, but those were my own fault, not the hardware or the operating system's fault. Just a case of I should have known better.

I now have a new item in my arsenal, a new 12" G4 PowerBook. Until now I have never been a PowerBook or laptop user nor did I feel that I need one. However, the advent of the high end processor (G4) running at 867 Mhz with the small format and weight, I decided to go for it. I have had it for about 3 weeks now, and I am loving it. It is quick, small and full of features that I need every day and use it now instead of my desktop at work as well as on the road and even at home to an extent. The "heat issue" is negligent even under heavy work, plugged in and running Final Cut or iMovie, warm but not uncomfortable ( actually feels quite good when you have a touch of arthritis). Apple finally really got it right with this 12" Book, at least for me.

Have a good one.
Bill

Hi Bill;

How did you get the floppies formatted HFS+? The only choices I get in the erase disk dialog in OS 9.1 (where the SuperDisk drive works) are Mac OS Standard and DOS, and Drive Setup refuses to format the mounted floppy.

However, I think a sticking point even if I can somehow format the floppy HFS+, is that there is no OS X driver available for the VST SuperDisk module. It requires a driver in OS 9.

Glad you enjoy the Odyssey, and congratualtions on the LittleAl 'Book acquisition. Portables grow on you. When I bought my PowerBook 5300 back in 1996, I figured I would use it as a number 2 computer. Within a month it was my number one workhorse, and I've never really gone back to desktops since.

Charles

Floppy drive support for OS 10

From Greg Henderson

Hello

I have noticed that the floppy drive performance on my Imation SuperDisk Drive is getting slower with each version of OS10. I am now at 10.2.3

When I e-mailed then I got a terse reply that it is an OS10 'thing' - end of story.

Maybe there is a story here , too.

I enjoy you articles

Regards
Greg Henderson

Hi Greg;

At least your SuperDisk drive works with OS X ;-)

It's obvious that support of SuperDisk/floppies is not an Apple priority.

Glad you enjoy the articles.

Charles

Floppies

From Brian Pickerill

Don't know if you realize this or not, but in Jaguar you cannot format a floppy in the Finder. Not on any system that I know of. It's best to get a FireWire HD, so long as you have FW on both systems. That is sweet, since it is at least 20,000 times the capacity, MUCH MUCH faster, etc... but I'm sure you know that already.

--Brian

Hi Brian;

I've had portable FireWire hard drive for two years, and it's a nice little device. However, my PowerBook 1400 doesn't support FireWire or USB, and can't be upgraded to do so.

Charles

Floppy alternative

From Alan Taylor

If you find using floppies difficult for data exchange between a PB1400 and a newer Mac, why not use a camera card instead ? You may already have all that's needed.

The chances are that you already have a Smart Media or Compact Flash card and maybe a card reader. If the 1400 won't work with the card reader, PCMCIA readers are available for $10 and need no drivers or software.

You also get the advantage of fast operation and larger capacity.

Alan Taylor

Hi Alan;

That would probably work. I don't have any of the hardware you mention, but it's something to look into.

Charles

Floppy or not

From: David Meyer

Charles,

I can understand your concerns about the lack of support for the SuperDrive in 10.2, but can't get too upset about the loss of the floppy drive. Have not used one for much beyond super-secure sneaker-net in years. They lack the capacity to hold enough data to make the effort worthwhile. Been using Zip disks for quite a while but even they are losing their charm. You can put a lot more on a CD that costs $0.50 and read it on nearly any computer. The ~3.5" CDs hold ~180MB, can be mailed in a business envelope, and will withstand most electronic and magnetic intrusion. Some drives don't read them reliably and they cost more than the larger disks.

You may yearn for your old floppies, but you need to move your data on to a new media while you can. CDs are more reliable than floppies ever were, and no more expensive, and even the SMALL ones have 100x the capacity of a floppy disk. I don't know who's buying them, or why, but the first iMac tolled their death knell and Dell just rang a second chime - the floppy is a media whose time has passed and those millions of new disks are for ghosts and zombies in deep denial.

Dave

Hi Dave;

As I said in the column, this is not a super big deal for me. There are other workarounds. However, It's annoying to have an expensive piece of hardware obsoleted so quickly, when it appears that there would be no tremendous obstacle to building SuperDisk/floppy support into X.

I have a Zip Drive expansion by module for the Pismo, and a SCSI external Zip drive that works with the 1400, but hookup is a hassle in the latter case. I also have a nice 16x10x40 CD-burner, but what I like about floppies is that when all you want to do is transfer a 10 k text file or somesuch, it's quick and easy. No other removable media is as slick for that.

Charles

OS X Floppy

From Ralph Fehlberg

Hey There,

Did you try to read a floppy disc? I had the same situation but with my WallStreet, but I didn't even look if the VST disc drive was compatible with OS X, I just inserted a floppy, it showed up on the desk top, and off I went. I only use the drive/floppy when I have to transfer a file between my Mac and a Windows machine, works fine with no fuss or muss.

Ralph Fehlberg

OS X Odyssey 285 - OS X Floppy Support - Not

From Walther Jensen

Dear Charles,

I have read your columns for a while and find them interesting and a reason to visit Applelinks often, but your results can be quite different from what I see myself.

Your conclusion in Odyssey 285 is from my point of view totally wrong! I have an old Wallstreet 266MHz PowerBook with a VST SuperDisk Expansion Bay and it is functioning perfectly with Mac OS X 10.2.4. I haven't used it for a while, so I had to test it again to make sure it still was working and it works fine. I tested it with a DOS FAT 16 formated disk without problems. I think you have to test your configuration again, because it is working without any extra installations in OS X.

Regards,
Walther Jensen

Hi Ralph and Walther;

I was trying to use a 1.4 MB DOS formatted floppy. No go on the Pismo. It won't show up on the desktop. Neither will a HFS Mac formatted floppy, but that's to be expected.

I am wondering how the drive is working with your WallStreets with no OS X driver. I'm guessing that Ralph is using DOS formatted disks too since he's transferring files to Windows, but DOS format floppies won't mount on my machine in OS X either.

It seems that the WallStreet VST drive may be more compatible with OS X than the Lombard/Pismo unit?

Charles

USB Floppy Disk

From Mark Jacobson

There is at least one mechanism out there that works on OS X 10.2 with no additional driver required. It is the YD-8U10 from YE-Data and was built into a number of USB external floppy drives. I purchased an Austrian branded one while in Austria on business, but I know people who have purchased identical drives in the US under other brands. They shipped with little snap on faceplates in several colors to match the iMac and a brown one to match the Lombard PowerBook (like mine). I can't remember the brand names of the US sold devices, but it was a recognizable brand name and I used to see them at CompUSA. If you follow the included link, the drive I speak of looks like the one on the top of the 3 drives at the left of the page. It has a manual eject button (PC style) with no motorized eject system, so you must eject it from the Finder and then manually eject the floppy. It also works well with VirtualPC, but sometimes OS X will put some stray hidden finder files onto the disk while you are not looking. They show up in Windows, so you can delete them from the VPC environment before ejecting.

I also have the VST internal SuperDisk/floppy drive that I bought with my Lombard over 3 years ago, and it has never really worked reliably. It does not work at all for me under Jaguar; in fact it hung the OS when I put it in the bay. I have an Imation external USB SuperDisk/floppy drive around here somewhere, but I've never tested it with OS X because I already had the smaller YE-Data drive which worked fine and SuperDisks never really caught on.

I hope this wasn't too long winded,

Mark Jacobson

http://www.yedata.com/support/external_floppydrives.shtml

Hi Mark;

Not at all. Thanks for the report.

My SuperDisk module works great in OS 9.1, but not at all in OS X. As I noted to Bill Landry, the lack of a device driver for OS X probably rules out OS X support.

Charles

Re: OS X Floppy Support - Not

From Michael Glaesemann

Hey Charles,

I'm an avid reader of your columns, checking out Applelinks and MacOpinion on a daily basis, and have been following your Mac OS X travails.

Your article "OS X Floppy Support — Not" brings up an important point in considering upgrading any hardware, software, or OS. All of these things need to work together for us, the users, to be able to get anything done.

Regarding the issue of floppy drive support, drivers are written by the company that produced the product. Apple writes (or at least provides) Mac OS X drivers for the peripherals and internal devices that ship with it's hardware, as well as a great number of drivers for printers and other devices made by other companies to make it easier for customers to use Mac OS X.

Ultimately, however, the choice and responsibility lies with the producer of the hardware. What operating systems do they choose to support? In my own experience with Mac OS X in Japan, Epson has had terrible Mac OS X support for its higher end printers. This resulted in the company I work for choosing a Fuji Xerox printer over the much more popular Epson products. (The Fuji Xerox is a dream!) Though Epson has finally begun releasing drivers for OS X 10.2.

I'm sure the delay has much to do with both how the company chooses to allocate it's resources and marketing. Epson may not have wanted to support pre-10.2 drivers for its printers because it knew 10.2 was just around the corner and didn't want to waste time and money writing drivers that would need rewriting in just a few months. Epson may also not wanted to support its older printers on OS X because people would need to buy newer printers if they wanted to use OS X. Of course, these are just my own speculations regarding Epson's decisions. It's my sincerest hope never to see the inside of a boardroom.

Your article centers around the fact that your VST SuperDisk Expansion Bay drive doesn't work for OS X 10.2 and the difficulties this is causing you. I can definitely understand your frustration. I've lost support for a number of scanners as I've upgraded apps and OSs.

I do wish, however, that you had brought up the point that this is not due to Mac OS X 10.2. Granted, nowhere in your article do you blame OS X 10.2 directly, and it's hard to argue about the "tone" of a piece. However, reading your article I am left with the feeling that this is a problem with Mac OS X, rather than with this piece of non-Apple hardware or the company that is no longer supporting it for the most up-to-date Macintosh OS. Even the message on the SmartDisk site is potentially misleading in its use of the passive voice: “The SuperDisk Drive for 1999 and 2000 PowerBook G3 is not supported on Mac OS X 10.2.”

The actor is conveniently left out. Recast in the active voice, the sentence properly reads "SmartDisk does not support the Superdisk Drive for 1999 and 2000 PowerBook G3 for laptops running Mac OS X 10.2."

SmartDisk has made a choice not to support Mac OS X 10.2 for its SuperDisk at this point. Hopefully they will write drivers for it in the future. I myself am still using my 1998 G3 266 Wallstreet and run OS X 10.2, and I know that there are a lot of us out there. I'm sure many people would benefit from being able to continue to use their expansion bay drives. And expansion bays are a feature I would love see returned to Apple's laptop line.

This may be a niggling point, but I know that there are a lot of misconceptions regarding OS X support in particular, and drivers in general. Without the proper driver, most people know that some device is just not working. They don't know why and don't know how to fix it. Adding to the confusion is that Apple has long used the term "Extension" when many other companies have used the term "driver".

Your article deals with the issue of drivers and Mac OS X, and you have an opportunity to help people understand this issue (the drive doesn't work because you don't have a driver installed); where to look for solutions (the manufacturer of the drive); and who is responsible for writing the drivers (SmartDisk). As I mentioned before, some readers may think the problem lies with Mac OS X 10.2 and Apple, rather than the non-Apple drive and SmartDisk.

Thanks for taking the time to read this longer email. Your writing from a practical, everyday perspective of a long-time user of Apple's laptops is a great resource.

Regards,
Michael

Hi Michael;

You're right, and I hope that I've corrected any misapprehension that might have been inferred with today's follow-up column.

I was misled myself by the wording on SmartDisk's website, but further investigation revealed that the issue in this case is the lack of a SmartDisk/VST driver for OS X and not a lack of support for SuoerDisks and floppies in OS X itself.

That said, I would still give Apple, say, a C- for their indifferent support of these disk formats (viz. the lack of support for the internal floppy drives in their own, supposedly OS X supported products).

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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