Hello.
I was wondering; many modern SCSI solutions like ZuluSCSI etc mention that they can emulate magneto-optical drives. Would that work on a NeXT machine and could that be used to install and run NS like it was done on a real MO-drive? Does the OS check for the drive manufactorer/model strings to detect a real NeXT MO drive? (The strings can be often faked from the emulator settings so this shouldn't be a problem).
Of course having/emulating a SCSI hard disk would be much better option, but I was wondering if this could be done for historical purposes just to emulate running a real MO drive.
The NeXT MO drive is not a SCSI device, so emulating it would require much more effort. There were SCSI MO drives available (3.5" 230 and 640 MB as well as various 5.25" variants), but I would expect that NeXTstep would simply handle them as a removable SCSI device. I have a 640 MB SCSI drive here but never tried to connect it to one of my NeXT machines...
There was a SCSI version of the same Canon mechanism (sold mainly to the Mac market in the late 80s, I think) but I agree with cuby that it will just be treated as a generic volume.
(I actually have never thought about removable SCSI support in the OS -- I guess this would mean you could drag the icon to the black hole to eject it?)
Quote from: cuby on September 11, 2024, 01:16:19 PMThe NeXT MO drive is not a SCSI device, so emulating it would require much more effort.
Ah ok, that's what I didn't know, I thought it was just another SCSI device.
Quote from: pl212 on September 11, 2024, 01:30:07 PM(I actually have never thought about removable SCSI support in the OS -- I guess this would mean you could drag the icon to the black hole to eject it?)
Just like CDs I guess? (There is eject in the Disk menu in NS 2.0 and newer at least)