CompuServe Messages

Newest update: I had a chat with the Emplant folks, and they gave me a few tips. I learned the following: 1. The Sybil interface really blows chunks, and they don't even think of it as a reliable way to do floppy I/O. They did not descibe it in glowing terms 🙂 Most insulting (to my intelligence, anyway) is the inclusion of a disk calibration utility that they tell me *DOES NOT WORK AT ALL*. Instead, I am forced to listen to the floppy step its heads, and twiddle a pot, hoping to hit "just the right setting". No thanks…I can deal with rough hardware, but this is just plain stupid. 2. The Emplant software still has some *very* rough edges…it crashes everything as soon as it gets bad floppy data. Since this happens a lot with the Sybil, this is something that needs some better error handling. 3. The two previous statements mean that the Emplant is doomed to be "experimental" hardware until UU comes up with something better. How about a hardware dongle that allows one to plug in a *real* Mac drive? The DD models can be picked up pretty cheaply, and most software still comes on DD disks. I would have rather spent $50 on something like this, instead of their crappy Sybil. Latest happenings: 1. I twiddled the pot, and found a "sweet spot" setting. It allowed me to get past the startup screen, and actually get to the Mac Finder…which told me that it needed to repair the boot floppy. Oh well…I may try Chris Tolmie's DD fix, and write out some new disks (and format them as well on an old style DD drive). Conclusion: 1. It works…really, it does. The main problem, as far as I can see it, is the need for *reliable* floppy I/O. If I had this, I would have been up and running tonight! Everything else works. Bottom line: Don't buy this thing unless UU has some new developments regarding floppy I/O. Floppies are not precise things, and they vary too much for the Sybil kludge. I have two floppies, and they give very different results, <continued>