Anyone else have trouble getting a floppy to mount in OS X?

wolfeye155wolfeye155
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I'm wondering if this is the fault of my brand new Teac drive, the disk (it's kind of old...) or OS X? The CD that came with it only works with OS 9 but I thought that it wouldn't have any problems without. I installed them in OS 9 and it works ok in 9 but in only works sometimes in X. What do I need to do in order to get it to work? I've erased the disc several times formatting it using Mac OS Extended. Should I be using Standard instead? I've also tried to partition it (with just 1 partition because I wondered if it would work after that) with no luck.



Thanks alot.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    I haven't had any problems with my VST USB Floppy Drive and Mac OS X.



    X should support the floppy drive just fine out of the box...weird.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    wolfeye155wolfeye155 Posts: 425member
    Ok I just solved the problem. I was messing around with this thing for an hour and finally just erased it using Mac OS Standard and now it's faster, and works! I'm happy. Now if only my school wasn't so cheap and would actually buy Zip drives for the computers! Then I wouldn't have to spend $50 on a useless floppy drive (although it is very nice looking). I swear when will they finally move on from 1.14 MB of storage?



    [ 07-13-2002: Message edited by: wolfeye155 ]</p>
  • Reply 3 of 12
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    Yea, my school is the same way. I think there are like three machines with Zip drives out of a few hundred.



    Which is why I bought my VST two years ago to let me do schoolwork on my iMac...cost $70 then.



    Oh well...its a great, nice looking drive that comes with color plates. I would reccomend it to anyone with a colored-mac.
  • Reply 4 of 12
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    The one or two times I've used flopies in OS X it's been better than in OS 9. OS X even reads PC formatted flopies, which OS 9 doesn't.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    I was about to say why aren't you guys just using CDRW, but then I saw mention of school environments, which kinda limits you. I think removable magnetic storage is just about dead, but if a high capacity floppy is what you're after, why not LS-120 or LS-240. 120 or 240MB, both read regular 1.44/2.88 discs, and the LS240 can even sqeeze 32MB onto a regular floppy (though this feature may be slow and unreliable)



    Maybe the best solution for small/medium files is one of the better 'driverless' USB thumb drives. There are some that just auto-detect and work without the need to install drivers on the host computer. 32-64MB should keep you covered for any office, notes, e-mail, adn small web graphics. Just put it on your key chain and you'll have backup where-ever you go.
  • Reply 6 of 12
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    [quote]Originally posted by EmAn:

    <strong>OS X even reads PC formatted flopies, which OS 9 doesn't.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    What? OS 9 reads PC floppies perfectly well. I have to stick a PC formatted floppy in my drive usually at least once a week, I never have any problems. I haven't had to read any floppies in OS X yet though.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    [quote]Originally posted by Xaqtly:

    <strong>



    What? OS 9 reads PC floppies perfectly well. I have to stick a PC formatted floppy in my drive usually at least once a week, I never have any problems. I haven't had to read any floppies in OS X yet though.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I never once got a PC formatted floppy to work. What version of OS 9? Since I use flopies literally about twice a year at most I don't think I've tried since probably around 9.0.4.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    haraldharald Posts: 2,152member
    What's a "floppy"?
  • Reply 9 of 12
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    AFAIK Mac OS 8-9 (all versions) has always supported DOS and Pro-DOS formats (read, write, format). I can't comment on any OS lower than that because I have never tested it.



    <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 10 of 12
    admactaniumadmactanium Posts: 812member
    yeah, but sometimes the ability to use pc floppies was turned off. it was an extension called pc exchange and i would find it disabled on lots of systems. i usually turned it off on my computer because i just didn't need it. the floppy icon would pop up with a blue-striped "PC" on it (like ibm's logo).
  • Reply 11 of 12
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    Reading PC floppies has always worked for me... it worked in 9.0.4 and it still works in 9.2.2. It also worked in 8.6 and 8.1. Adamactium is right, you may want to check Extensions Manager for either PC Exchange or File Exchange... and look for Foreign File Access, too.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    Hmm... I'll check it out on my dad's iMac (he's the only one in the family that uses OS 9).
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