>Of course, MAC OS may not be so virus friendly, but I don't know about that.
>The "spare" HD would have to be a SCSI drive, right? How does the MAC go
>about
>recognizing a valid SCSI device? What has to be done to a JAZ platter to
>make
>it (the MAC) recognize it.
The MacOS is technically no more or less virus friendly than Windows. You
just don't have some of the obvious security flaws (like VBScript). But
the main reason viri aren't as rampant on the mac as they are on the PC
is simply, if you are going to write a virus you are probably trying to
hit as many computers as possible... so why write for a 5% market share
when you can write for a 90% market share.
As for recognizing SCSI devices. The Mac will recognize that a device is
connected (if you have some kind of a scsi probe, you can see that the
mac knows it is there), but depending on the device, it may or may not be
usable without additional software. In the case of tape drives, you need
software that will talk to them (like retrospect), Zip and Jaz drives
have a small extension that will let the OS see them and treat them like
high capacity floppy drives (and I think that extension may have been
rolled into OS 9.x but I'm not positive). CDs are similar, they have a
driver with the OS, (although that driver tends to only want to support
Apple approved CDs, so there are 3rd party drivers like FWB's CD Toolkit,
and Toast's CD Reader). Hard Drive support is built into the OS (low
level formating and partitioning may need 3rd party software if it isn't
an "Apple" drive). Most everything else needs 3rd party software (like
scanners, SCSI->Ethernet adaptors, etc.), but usually, the
software/drivers are free, and will come with the device (like my Umax
scanner software is available free from Umax's web site... but it only
works with their scanners)
-chris
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Received on Mon Nov 19 2001 - 20:45:54 GMT