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PCs reading other disks

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Paladin9:
We all know that macs can read pc disks but windows can not read a mac disk.  why?  I was told that apple had a copyright or whatever on there format and that is why microsoft did not add support for mac disks. is this true?  it does not sound right to me.

voidmain:
Not only can't Windows read Mac disks but it can't read any other kinds of disks either (minix, ext2, etc). It can only read floppy disks with the FAT file system. Of course if you get the right 3rd party software you might be able to read other floppy file systems. Like usual Windows doesn't include such support on it's own.

But I use Linux on my PC, it can read any of these formats without 3rd party software. I only have a 1.44MB floppy drive so I am obviously limited by the floppy hardware.

[ November 24, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

hm_murdock:
because back in the day, Apple used a custom drive controller that used a constant linear velocity which changed the rotation speed of the platter for different locations, allowing it to pack more data on the disk.

PCs were physically incapable of reading them. It wasn't until the original SuperDrive or FDHD (Floppy Disk High Density) was released that Apple disks used the same physical layout as PC disks. by that time, MS simply decided not to support them for some reason. not sure why.

Pantso:
----->READ CAREFULLY:<-----

It's not Apple's fault. It's Microsoft's fault.

If you use any third party application, like void main wrote, then you could be able to read other file systems (including HFS) from windoze. so, there's noone else to blame here but M$.  

billy_gates:
if linux and mac have no trouble reading Windows disks, how come neither linux nor Mac (that i have used) can read NTFS?

Don't get me wrong I love both Linux and Mac and hate windows, but I desperately need this functionality.

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