Powerbook: Why Won't It Read Macintosh Floppies?

TECHINFO-0020531

TOPIC

When I insert some Macintosh-formatted floppy disks into my Powerbook computer it wants to initialize them. However, the same floppy disks are read by my desktop Macintosh with no difficulties. Why does this happen?

DISCUSSION

This type of situation can occur even though your Macintosh Powerbook computer's floppy drive is operating within specification. The head mechanism used in Powerbook computers' floppy drives is not capable of recalibrating to the same degree as the floppy drives in desktop Macintosh computers. Therefore, PowerBook computers are "less tolerant" of poor quality disk formatting.

Commercial floppy disks which are duplicated in large volumes at very high speeds generally have lower quality formats. In order to access the information from such disks it may be necessary to format some disks on the Powerbook computer. Then duplicate the commercial software from the original disks using a desktop Macintosh computer and disk duplicating software, such as Apple Disk Copy.

In order to confirm that the Powerbook floppy drive is operating within specification try formatting a disk on the Powerbook. If it can consistently format disks and consistently read them, it is probably operating normally.

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