>The Apple II floppy was incredibly ingenious, and a great value, the Mac
>floppy the biggest ripoff this side of mil/nasa. That stinking floppy drive
>was $170 from Apple until it was discontinued, and nothing but the Apple
>unit will work in a mac.
Given how 'dumb' the PC floppy is though, it's easy to see
why you couldn't just pop one into the Mac. Mac floppies, like Amiga
floppies, automatically update the OS upon insertion or removal of a
disk. Mac floppies also are under OS control for ejecting the disks
automatically. Obviously there are considerable differences between
the two platforms then as far as the floppy drives are concerned,
which is why one can't just pop a PC drive into an Amiga either. Not
all platforms use passive components that require user intervention
at all times.
>PCI slots were the straw that annoyed this camel beyond anything else. A
>huge portion of the reason I bought a PCI mac was compatibility with a
>standard after many years of suffering nubus price gouging and neglect. But
>NO, it isn't freaking compatible with anything PC PCI, and over the
Apple can't be blamed for the lack of drivers for various
cards though. I have used any number of PC PCI boards in my PCI
Mac's, including USB, Firewire and video boards. The slots
themselves are compliant with the PCI standard. It's just a matter
of lacking 3rd party drivers. Creative Labs is releasing a Mac
version of it's SB Live, NVidia has done Mac versions of it's
Geoforce boards, 3Dfx did Mac versions of it's Voodoo4 and Voodoo5
boards just before they went under, and Adaptec has done Mac versions
of many of it's SCSI boards.
Apple isn't a perfect company but most of the designs are
solid and they aren't afraid of taking chances to try to advance the
technology, or occasionally just to make the sale.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
Received on Sat Mar 24 2001 - 21:54:01 GMT