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Mac XL Disk compatabilty
Posted by: unity on 2014-10-14 16:08:04 Its been far too long since I have owned a Mac XL. I do not recall if the disks are interchangeable with a Mac. That is if I have a floppy formatted for use in a Mac XL, can I put that floppy in a Mac and will it read it (say a 512k with external)?
Posted by: ScutBoy on 2014-10-14 18:27:42 As long as it's a 400k disk it will be fine. Formatted on the Mac or XL, it _should_ work either way. There was an upgrade ROM that let you run an 800k drive in an XL, but chances are low that one is there. If you pop off the front of the Lisa, and there's the newer 800k drive there, then lucky you. 🙂 Disks should still be interchangeable between a Mac and an XL. The XL with Macworks Plus was essentially a big Mac Plus with a 400k drive.
Posted by: david__schmidt on 2014-10-14 20:12:05 There was some point along the OS line where Macs with built-in floppies lost the ability to write and then read 400k MFS floppies. They kept working with 800k until the bitter end, though. I just ran into that tonight... my Quadra running OS9 wasn't able to read a 400k disk; it wanted to format it. But popping it in an earlier machine running 7.5 read it fine. This is a decent treatment of the subject: http://siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html
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