krs

I bought a Teac USB floppy drive, model FD-05PUB, several years ago after I got my G4 so that I could read all the floppy disks from my older Mac systems.
This Teac drive worked well with the G4 under OS 9.2.2 but now I'm having trouble using it with OS 10.2.8 on the G4.

First of all it has become very slow to read anything off the disk. One can hear it search and read....and it's maybe 1/3 the speed it was under OS 9.2.
I'm also having trouble reading a floppy much more often than under OS 9.2.
Just had a situation where it would not even mount the floppy in OS X but when I booted my Mac up in OS 9.2 the same floppy mounted and read perfectly and relatively fast on that drive.

I know, floppies are ancient techology but I also have a Sony Digital Mavica camera which uses floppies as a storage media. I hate to trash it since it has a 10x optical zoom and focuses down to a fraction of an inch for excellent close ups. That's the main reason I still use floppies even today.

Anyone have any ideas why the teac floppy drive would perform so differently under OS X compared to OS 9.2? There aren't any drivers, at least I never downloaded or installed any specific to this Teac USB drive.

gnatsum

well....i don't know anything about this topic,

BUT...

i have heard that os X has no code to use floppy drives...hence why it works in 9.2.2, and not in 10...well...any machine designed to run os X doesn't have a floppy drive option...the only reason there are some available for purchase was because g4's first used os 9...10 came out a little while later...

so... this doesn't help you, but states the obvious i guess...

gnatsum

my grade 8 teacher had teac speakers...didn't know teac made anything else...

krs

Hmmmm.............
I don't think that's correct.....that OS X has no code to use floppy drives.....
The Teac drive actually shows up in OS 10.2 disk utility and is identified correctly, down to the last letter in the product code.
It just mounts very slowly in OS X; there are extra files on the floppy which are not there with OS 9.2 and I cannot read every file eventhough I can read the same file with OS 9.2.
BTW - these are PC formatted floppies (from the Sony camera); I'll try a Mac formatted floppy to see if that makes any difference.
In OS X, each xxx.jpg file from the camera also has a xxx.411 filewhich of course OS X can't open. That xxx.411 file is not there with Os 9.2 (reading the same floppy). The xxx.411 file is 5K, the xxx.jpg file is much bigger - really strange having these .411 files show up.

I'll guess I'll do a bit of searching with google to see what i can come up with. thanks for the replies - I was hoping someone else was using a USB floppy drive with OS X.

krs

Well - if all else fails ask the manufacturer...............
I should have done that before i posted here.

According to Teac's website no driver is required for OS 9.02 to 9.2.2 (only required for an early version of OS 8)
For OS X all it states is: "upgrade to OS 10.2" didn't get to 10.3 or 10.4 yet. I dropped Teac tech support a line to see what they say to my problem...but 'googling' elsewhere I found comments that other USB floppy drives are much slower with OS X than with OS 9 and some do not work at all.
So in retrospect - I'm may be the lucky one - mine works some of the time and OS 9 is always a fallback in a pinch.

krs

Well - I just had a chance to connect the Teac floppy drive to the Mac mini running OS 10.3.9
Read speed is much (actually very much) improved over OS 10.2.8 on the G4. I'm back to the speed a was getting with OS 9.2.
The read and copy speed with this Teac drive on the G4 with OS 10.2.8 has decreased even more - to the point where it's almost unusable. To read a full floppy, about 1.2 Meg of 23 or so photos takes 5 to 7 minutes!!! with OS 10.2 on the G4; with the Mac mini and OS 10.3 it only takes 67 seconds to copy the 1.2 M (23 photos).
Would anyone have any clues whatsoever why there is such a huge difference? I'm going to try some of the other USB ports on the G4 when I get back home to see if that makes any difference.