Some of the disks that Apple pushed off on the unsuspecting public didn't even
talk SCSI. I believe that's why they had to maintain such tight control over
what you could attach to their early SCSI channels. If it didn't say the
right words, it wasn't recognized.
Several of the Apple external SCSI drives I've got bying about (and that's all
they'll do because of their "special" firmware, use bridge controllers that
have Apple-specific firmware. In a couple of cases I've had similar non-Apple
boards and substituted the ROM from one of them only to have the drive
suddenly spring to life on a diagnostic channel where it previously gave no
evidence of its presence.
I do not believe Apple did this so much to thwart the user's attempt to use
non-Apple products as it was an effort to maintain backwards-compatibility
with earlier generations of "SCSI" (their version) hardware. The fact it made
it difficult to use non-Apple stuff was a desirable side-effect.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <erd_6502_at_yahoo.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 8:35 AM
Subject: RE: "Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)
>
> --- Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com> wrote:
> > What about the Mac plus which had a SCSI interface, but Apple
> > discouraged its use (preferring, rather, that you plug your
> > hard drive into the floppy interface, IIRC)...
>
> I think there was exactly one product from Apple that plugged into
> the floppy port - a 20MB disk that required strange drivers. I
> don't recall the part number, but when Apple came out with a 20MB
> SCSI disk, they called it the "20SC" or something similar (IIRC)
> to distinguish it from the older product.
>
> That having been said, I would question how much Apple "discouraged"
> people from using the SCSI port on the Mac Plus. There may have
> been an alternative and Apple may have pushed it over third-party
> disks, but once the stock of strange disks ran out, presuming
> the Mac Plus was still being made, I doubt Apple would continue
> to urge people to ignore the SCSI port.
>
> -ethan
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Apr 25 2002 - 15:52:24 BST