[rescue] Parallel ports [was Re: Slightly OT: ?Bad Cap Saga]

[Nate]

On Aug 21, 2008, at 11:38 PM, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
>
>>> I still use floppy disks on OS X 10.5.4 with the drivers built  
>>> into the
>>> operating system.
>>
>> Internal or USB? USB floppy drives use very different drivers than
>> internal ones.
>
> Both internal IDE-connected floppy drives (although that was under  
> 10.4)
> and USB-connected floppy drives.

Yes, but any IDE or USB floppy drive will only give you MFM (720K,  
1.44MB) floppy support, and will not give you GCR (400K, 800K)  
support, which the internal floppy controller on Macs up through the  
G3 had.

> Since there don't exist any Macs with onboard[0] floppy controllers  
> which
> are capable of running 10.5, I don't know whether it has a working  
> driver
> for that or not.


The floppy driver you're thinking of was last updated over six years  
ago and never made it past version 0.96:

http://www.darwin-development.org/floppy/

While you're right that officially there are no Macs with onboard  
floppy controllers which can run 10.5, it is technically possible to  
run 10.5 on a G3 that has a G4 upgrade in it:

http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/0807mb/0711.html#43

So for an extremely small subset of 10.5 users, there would be some  
value to a good floppy driver for their internal floppy drive for 10.5.

- Nate