Beige G3 floppy Superdrive work under Tiger?

[Mac128]

I've read a bunch of different stuff on the net. Anybody know if the floppy Superdrive is still recognized under 10.3 or 10.4 on a Beige G3 Tower? If so, does it still read/write 800K disks correctly?

 

[iMac600]

The Beige G3 floppy drives don't work at all under Mac OS X Panther or Tiger. I don't even recall them working on OS X, period. There was a project to write a driver for it, but last I tried it didn't do much to help.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

No.

Period.

There was a project from the now-essentially-defunct MkLinux that worked up to 10.2, but it was painfully slow (USB floppies are *MUCH* faster,) and stopped working with 10.3.

Here it is for Jaguar, and for 10.1.

I'll let you know tomorrow if it supports 800 KB floppies.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, fine, so not really "tomorrow"...

First note: the MkLinux floppy driver is extraordinarily, painfully slow. Put in a floppy, and it takes 1-2 minutes to show up on the desktop, with the whole system slow as molasses while you wait. This is on a 300 MHz beige G3 with 192 MB RAM.

On 10.2, with the 10.2 version of the driver, 800k disks mount just fine, though. (As do 1.4 MB disks, rather obviously.) Once the disk has mounted, it reads and writes slowly, but not unacceptably so. (Much slower than a USB floppy drive, but not as slow as you would expect based on the slow mount time.)

Disk Utility will format either format (800k or 1.4 MB) as Mac or PC. You can choose to format it as Mac OS Extended (the default, which is horribly incorrect for floppies,) Mac OS Standard (the right one,) MS-DOS, or UNIX. The goofy thing is that if you take what had been an 800k Mac disk, and format it as MS-DOS, it makes an 800k (not 720k) DOS disk! (Which won't work in any PC, and won't even work on another Mac running a Classic OS with PC Exchange, or on a USB floppy drive on another OS X machine, even though the same machine will read a properly formatted 720k DOS disk.) And formatting takes just shy of forever.

It reads and writes to 800k Mac and 1.4 MB Mac disks just fine, as well as 720k and 1440k PC disks.

Note again that this driver *ONLY* works in 10.1 or 10.2. (Separate downloads for each.)

In general, it is faster for me to reboot into Mac OS 9, do whatever I need done on the disk, and reboot back into Jaguar, than it is to try to do anything useful with it in Jaguar. (This does not apply to simply moving a file on or off, although see the next point.)

Finally, ejecting is problematic. I have yet to get it to eject a disk properly from the Finder; although it will eject from Disk Utility. If you eject from the Finder, the icon goes away, but the disk never pops out. And when that happens, you're out of luck, it won't even appear in Disk Utility any more. After that, my only recourse was to reboot into OS 9 to eject it; as even on a reboot, it didn't mount again in OS X.

(I spent over an hour determining the above, it's that slow. The vast majority of the time was spent waiting for Disk Utility, with no actual disk activity happening. Some operations would lock up DU for up to 5 minutes before it became responsive again. Formating locked up DU for 3 minutes before it even started the actual process of formatting, followed by a similar stretch after formatting.)

P.S. In testing the readability of formatting, I discovered that the Windows Vista GUI is incapable of formatting a 720k floppy. You have to use the command line "format a: /f:720" to get it to format a 720k floppy. Of course, I'm also annoyed that the motherboard I have for my Vista machine doesn't support 5.25" floppy drives...

 

[Quadraman]

Okay, fine, so not really "tomorrow"...
First note: the MkLinux floppy driver is extraordinarily, painfully slow. Put in a floppy, and it takes 1-2 minutes to show up on the desktop, with the whole system slow as molasses while you wait. This is on a 300 MHz beige G3 with 192 MB RAM.

On 10.2, with the 10.2 version of the driver, 800k disks mount just fine, though. (As do 1.4 MB disks, rather obviously.) Once the disk has mounted, it reads and writes slowly, but not unacceptably so. (Much slower than a USB floppy drive, but not as slow as you would expect based on the slow mount time.)

Disk Utility will format either format (800k or 1.4 MB) as Mac or PC. You can choose to format it as Mac OS Extended (the default, which is horribly incorrect for floppies,) Mac OS Standard (the right one,) MS-DOS, or UNIX. The goofy thing is that if you take what had been an 800k Mac disk, and format it as MS-DOS, it makes an 800k (not 720k) DOS disk! (Which won't work in any PC, and won't even work on another Mac running a Classic OS with PC Exchange, or on a USB floppy drive on another OS X machine, even though the same machine will read a properly formatted 720k DOS disk.) And formatting takes just shy of forever.

It reads and writes to 800k Mac and 1.4 MB Mac disks just fine, as well as 720k and 1440k PC disks.

Note again that this driver *ONLY* works in 10.1 or 10.2. (Separate downloads for each.)

In general, it is faster for me to reboot into Mac OS 9, do whatever I need done on the disk, and reboot back into Jaguar, than it is to try to do anything useful with it in Jaguar. (This does not apply to simply moving a file on or off, although see the next point.)

Finally, ejecting is problematic. I have yet to get it to eject a disk properly from the Finder; although it will eject from Disk Utility. If you eject from the Finder, the icon goes away, but the disk never pops out. And when that happens, you're out of luck, it won't even appear in Disk Utility any more. After that, my only recourse was to reboot into OS 9 to eject it; as even on a reboot, it didn't mount again in OS X.

(I spent over an hour determining the above, it's that slow. The vast majority of the time was spent waiting for Disk Utility, with no actual disk activity happening. Some operations would lock up DU for up to 5 minutes before it became responsive again. Formating locked up DU for 3 minutes before it even started the actual process of formatting, followed by a similar stretch after formatting.)

P.S. In testing the readability of formatting, I discovered that the Windows Vista GUI is incapable of formatting a 720k floppy. You have to use the command line "format a: /f:720" to get it to format a 720k floppy. Of course, I'm also annoyed that the motherboard I have for my Vista machine doesn't support 5.25" floppy drives...

No wonder Apple dumped the floppy. They probably weren't having any better luck getting it to work properly than you did so they decided to drop support for it and make it look like they were doing something new and cool rather than admit they didn't have the foggiest idea how to make floppies work under OS X.

It's funny, but the NeXT had floppy drives and NeXTSTEP read them just fine. Since OS X borrows so much from NeXTSTEP, you would have thought they would have been able to handle to floppies.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

What's goofy is that the floppy drive in a beige G3 works just fine in most of the varieties of Linux and BSD; and the internal floppy drives work fine on MkLinux machines.

The driver is just a MkLinux driver hacked and ported to Darwin/OS X.

 

[Quadraman]

What's goofy is that the floppy drive in a beige G3 works just fine in most of the varieties of Linux and BSD; and the internal floppy drives work fine on MkLinux machines.
The driver is just a MkLinux driver hacked and ported to Darwin/OS X.

And if I remember right, both NeXTSTEP and OS X use some variant of BSD buried deep in their core, so if you can make a floppy driver for BSD, it should be no problem to make one for OS X. I would think it should have taken an Apple software engineer all of about 30 seconds to bash one out.

 

[Temetka]

apple was in the midst of transitioning to the kLine of consumer and pro hardware / software. During this time neither the iMac nor the powermacs came with floppy drives. More than likely Steve decided that since floppies were obsolete already. That being the case floppy support was more than likely never setup in the forts place. There is no reason for their new ultra modern operating system to support such obviously ancient technology. We all know hoe how his Steveness hates old tech.

 

[Quadraman]

apple was in the midst of transitioning to the kLine of consumer and pro hardware / software. During this time neither the iMac nor the powermacs came with floppy drives. More than likely Steve decided that since floppies were obsolete already. That being the case floppy support was more than likely never setup in the forts place. There is no reason for their new ultra modern operating system to support such obviously ancient technology. We all know hoe how his Steveness hates old tech.

There's a huge downside to that, though, as you risk alienating your old customers who may have a lot invested in things like software on floppies, serial modems, parallel printers, ADB mouse and keyboard, etc then suddenly Apple decides one day to stop including floppy drives in their products then ditches serial, parallel and ADB for USB and Firewire and the old Mac monitor port for video cards with ADC and VGA so now you have to shell out money for new everything else to go along with your shiny new Mac. With a single stroke Apple manages to obsolete not just your old Mac, but every other piece of computer related paraphernalia you own. I'd be very upset with Apple and probably buy a PC instead. Think about it, you've been holding on to your old 9600 or G3 minitower for a while but now it's time to buy a new Mac. you bring home your shiny new MDD G4 Powermac and nothing from your old setup works with it! Not your monitor, not your printer, nothing! I'd be jumping mad.

 

[Bunsen]

With a single stroke

See? That's how you do it.

Hardly with a single stroke though. ADB support continued with the B&W G3, SCSI cards were optional build ins; parallel printers were never supported. And the motherboard of the Rev.A iMac proves that continued legacy support was at least considered (ADB, Mac serial, Mac video, floppy all available)

 

[Temetka]

@Quadraman:

Legacy is great, really. However how long should Apple support the floppy? Should Intel Pro Macs have floppy drives? Should xServes?

Apple has done a "With s single stroke..." in the past.

Apple II what?

 

[Bolle]

And the motherboard of the Rev.A iMac proves that continued legacy support was at least considered (ADB, Mac serial, Mac video, floppy all available)

because it was just a hacked gossamer board which came with all these things

 

[register]

If you really need 3.5 inch floppies, still, get an Imation Super Disk Drive. It has a motor driven eject mechanism, to have all maclike behaviour even with OS X. I use the external USB type of this drive, occasionally to be found at ebay. It runs well with 10.4.11. I can not tell if the internal drive would work. Better check for the interface type before purchasing one.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

If you really need 3.5 inch floppies, still, get an Imation Super Disk Drive. It has a motor driven eject mechanism, to have all maclike behaviour even with OS X. I use the external USB type of this drive, occasionally to be found at ebay. It runs well with 10.4.11. I can not tell if the internal drive would work. Better check for the interface type before purchasing one.

Yeah, I have three SuperDisk Drives for floppy support on my non-floppy machines. The only downside (from a Mac perspective) is that they are not compatible with 800k (or 400k) Mac-formatted floppies. Only 1.4 MB Mac, or 720k or 1.4 MB PC.

I got mine for $5 each from Goodwill.

 

[LCGuy]

Think about it, you've been holding on to your old 9600 or G3 minitower for a while but now it's time to buy a new Mac. you bring home your shiny new MDD G4 Powermac and nothing from your old setup works with it! Not your monitor, not your printer, nothing! I'd be jumping mad.

Which is why you do your research to begin with before you buy anything. In that case you'd probably be better off either hanging onto the 9600 for a little longer as it is, or putting a G4 upgrade in it.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Think about it, you've been holding on to your old 9600 or G3 minitower for a while but now it's time to buy a new Mac. you bring home your shiny new MDD G4 Powermac and nothing from your old setup works with it! Not your monitor, not your printer, nothing! I'd be jumping mad.

heh. I had a customer that was a lawyer. She was running an old Windows 98 machine. She needed to use some court recording software that the state and local governments used, and the latest version would no longer run on Windows 98. (And, of course, the courts required the latest version.)

So she bought a brand-new computer.

In February of last year.

Which came with Vista.

Which wouldn't run the software.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either way, you still lose.

I have also had a customer that did upgrade from an old beige Mac to a (MDD!) G4, and ran into that very problem. Serial printer, SCSI scanner, failed to work. Luckily she had at least bought a Cinema Display to go with the new computer. (At least the old monitors work on a new computer with an adapter. I have used an ancient 14" "Apple Macintosh Color Display" on my MacBook Pro!)

 

[Quadraman]

Think about it, you've been holding on to your old 9600 or G3 minitower for a while but now it's time to buy a new Mac. you bring home your shiny new MDD G4 Powermac and nothing from your old setup works with it! Not your monitor, not your printer, nothing! I'd be jumping mad.

Which is why you do your research to begin with before you buy anything. In that case you'd probably be better off either hanging onto the 9600 for a little longer as it is, or putting a G4 upgrade in it.

But going from a late beige machine to a MDD was a typical upgrade back when the MDD was new. If you are a corporate user or a school with 200 machines to replace, having to replace all your old peripherals at the same time is unacceptable. It would be enough to drive you away from expensive Macs to cheap PC's.