Thanks for the suggestions! (#1)

Unfortunately, I have no way of hooking up the drive to my Mac, because I have 
a newer Mac without SCSI. AND, based on online forums, I know I need some kind 
of driver/tools/software package to format the Orb disks on my classic Mac 
(system 7.6.1). Does anybody have links to download this mystery software 
package? Can I just use Lido7 or MicroNet?

-Jake

On Dec 19, 2011, at 4:36 AM, Gregg Eshelman <[email protected]> wrote:

> --- On Sun, 12/18/11, Jake <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> 1) a suitable driver and software package for a Castlewood Orb 2.2GB
> 
> The "quick and dirty" method to get most any removable disk drive working 
> with a classic Mac System/OS.
> 
> 1. Hook the drive up to a PC
> 
> 2. If your target Mac format will be HFS, format the disk to FAT16
> 
> 3. If your target Mac format will be HFS+, format the disk to FAT32
> 
> 4. Connect the drive to your Mac, turn the drive power on and insert the disk
> 
> 5. When the Mac asks if you want to initialize or eject the disk, choose 
> initialize
> 
> 6. In a few seconds you'll have the disk in Mac format with the Apple disk 
> driver installed, in spite of it not having special Apple recognized firmware
> 
> 7. A Mac does not need special drivers for removable disks (except CD/DVD) 
> *if* you have a disk in the drive during boot. It will load drivers off the 
> disk(s) into RAM and keep them in memory so you can swap disks. Using this 
> method it is best to have all the disks for a specific drive formatted with 
> the same driver.
> 
> The low level filesystem structures of FAT16/HFS and FAT32/HFS+ are either 
> identical or close enough that a Mac has no problem quickly overwriting the 
> higher level stuff.
> 
> I've done this with SyQuest and Iomega removable drives and I've also done it 
> with hard drives the same way. Format them then let your Mac initialize the 
> unknown drive.
> 
> I've even done this to use a real hard drive with the Basilisk II Mac 
> emulator, but I only used FDISK to make it a single FAT16 partition then used 
> Mac OS 8.1 in the emulator to initialize it. That worked because without the 
> high level formatting Windows 98SE couldn't see and "latch onto" the drive.
> 
> A good and cheap SCSI controller for the PC is an Adaptech 2940 single 
> channel, narrow SCSI PCI. Don't get a U (ultra), W (wide) or UW or U2W 
> because you'll either have to use the internal 50 pin narrow connector or get 
> a Wide/Ultra to Narrow external adapter. Some of the Wide/Ultra models might 
> not have the narrow internal connector.
> 
> You'll need a high density 50 pin to DB25 or CEN50 cable for external 
> connections.
> 
> The Adaptech's built in low level format also works to clean up problems that 
> can be caused by formatting software on a Mac. Once I had FWB HDT 4 screw up 
> creating a RAID and nothing I could find for Mac software could do anything 
> with any of the drives, until I low level formatted them with the Adaptech on 
> a PC.
> 
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