CompuServe Messages

Steve: I've got an Insite floptical but I don't think you can set it up to handle 1.76mb Amiga drives, though it certainly would be worth trying to write a mountlist for that. Let me know if you succeed! Meanwhile, bear this in mind: Since the Insite reads 720K and 1.44 meg PC disks without trouble, you can transparently use those for Amiga storage with two limitations: You must have CrossDOS (included in WB 2.1 up) running on your system and set up to auto-activate. Then, you can read and write Amiga files right to those cheap, preformatted 1.44meg IBM diskettes. The only major drawback: You'll be stuck with the MS-DOS 8.3 file-naming limitation. The good news is that CrossDOS will automatically clip lengthier file names down when you copy, move or save a file to the diskette. On my system, this is all seamless and pretty much automatic. My floptical *usually* detects a disk change without intervention, but sometimes I have to help it along with DISKCHANGE or SCSIMounter (a freeware utility). Usually this is only a problem when I'm switching from a 20-meg floptical to another sized disk. I address high-density MS-DOS disks as IBMHD: and use a mountlist adapted from the CrossDOS manual for that as per the following: /* CrossDOS file system entry * * This file enables CrossDOS on the built-in floppy drive normally * referred to as DF0:. PC1 does the same for DF1. By creating new * versions of this file and changing the Unit line to use other * numbers, you can * make CrossDOS available on other devices. For example, changing the value * of Unit to 2 would create a mount file that would enable CrossDOS on DF2. */ FileSystem = L:CrossDOSFileSystem Device = scsi.device Unit = 2 Flags = 0 Surfaces = 2 BlocksPerTrack = 18 Reserved = 1 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 0 HighCyl = 79 Buffers = 5 BufMemType = 0 StackSize = 600 Priority = 5 GlobVec = -1 DosType = 0x4D534400 [ Above saved to the DEVS:DosDrivers drawer as a file named IBMHD. The icon for this should set the tooltype ACTIVATE=1 and use C:Mount as its default tool. ] BTW, I *also* use the floptical as a hard disk device for my AMAX II board. The Mac side of the system finds it as a SCSI device, no problem. And of course via CrossDOS you could also read and write other odd formats, such as Atari-formatted disks. his floptical has really become an omnidrive in my system! — Ron Legro / MILWAUKEE WI USA via Amiga Autopilot 1.72 — the only way to fly