The Mac uses disk drivers because the ROM in the Mac doesn't know how to "talk" directly to a whole bunch of different hard drives with all sorts of different configurations of cylinders, heads and sectors. 1984 was in the days before PC hard drive controllers could autodetect the drive paramaters and had to be manually configured for each drive or had a small list of drives they could work with.
The Mac got around all that by A. using SCSI and B. having a software program interrogate the drive before formatting it then writing a driver to the disk that would allow the Mac ROM code to interface with any drive in exactly the same way. Saved space in the ROM and PRAM (which is like the CMOS RAM in a PC) and insulated the user from having to know anything about the physical parameters of the drive. But then Apple had to throw a monkey wrench into the works by programming their drive setup software to only work with SCSI drives that the manufacturer had inserted a "tag" into the ROM saying Apple Computer. Apple wanted every Mac owner to be forced to have to buy "Apple" brand hard drives. Thus were 3rd party formatter utilities like Silverlining, Hard Disk Toolkit, SCSI Director and others created to get around the Apple monopoly on Macintosh hard drive supply. So in a sense all Macs are using a "BIOS overlay" driver like when you use Disk Manager to shove an 8 gigabyte IDE drive into a PC with a BIOS that only "understands" up to 2 gigabytes. But with the Macintosh they all use the same "language" to talk to the drives so a drive formatted on one Mac will (should!) be usable on any other Mac. Try making a Disk Tools floppy for the version of the System or Mac OS you have on that Vintage Mac then connect only the drive you're having trouble with and see if it mounts on the desktop. ===== http://www.junkscience.com "All the Junk that's fit to Debunk!" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Vintage Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml> The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
