Mac OS 10.2.1 and Generic USB FDD

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EricF

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A friend just gave me an external USB floppy drive. It doesn't have a brand name on it (though I'm told it's from Macally), but the label on the bottom says "Generic USB FDD (UD-376)" I'm trying to use it on my WindTunnel Dual 1 GHz machine with OS 10.2.1.

It works fine with an already formatted floppy.
It works fine formatting a floppy in DOS format; after formatting it mounts and shows up on the desktop.

It doesn't work when I try to format it as HFS+ The format seems to succeed, but when the format is done, the floppy doesn't mount on the desktop, and Disk Utility shows the drive ("1.41 MB Generic") with a mount point with no name (even though there was a name of "untitled" specified at format time). So I can't mount it and formatting it again doesn't make any difference.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

-Eric
 
Idea #1 - Format as DOS, you already know that works, All recent Macs will read and write with DOS format floppies. If you have to share with a PC, that's great!
Idea #2 - Why use Mac format if it won't work?
 
Clearly the drive is "useable" especially if I have preformatted floppies for HFS+. But I just have the usual bee in my bonnet that it should "just work." It's a Mac after all!

But you're right, it certainly is useable for most things I'll come up against. And if I HAVE to format a floppy for HFS+, I can always boot into OS 9 (though I'm not 100% certain it'll work there either!)

Thanks for your reply!

-Eric
 
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