First, I have this nasty tendency to choose vernacular that seems to irritate some readers. So, please understand, I'm not trying to start any arguments or flame wars. π
a brody wrote:
Contact Us is at the bottom right corner of each page. This is why web browsers have scrollbars. If you could fit everything on one page you wanted to say, you'd have to have 2 point type and a microscope, or be using a text browser such as Lynx.
π Been to the contact page, and a couple pages from that. Nowhere have I found a link that goes directly to Apple Support to ask a question like mine. There are links to web pages for specific products, such as iTunes, MobileMe, etc., but no link to ask questions of Apple itself. There are links to these discussion forums, of course. And, I suspect, if you purchase a maintenance/repair plan, you can get to them directly.
A person might get help from the Genius Bar at an Apple Store, but the nearest store to me is an hour and a half away. Not exactly convenient. π And the times I've been in the store, I've discovered I often know more than most of the associates, unless I happen to be lucky and find someone that has a few grey hairs on their head! π This is my "option of last resort".
I have a loooooooot of grey hairs! π
USB Floppy drives are a bit of an anathema these days, but at least in Mac OS X, only 1.44 MB floppies are typically recognized by it. As for recognition under Windows operating on a Mac, that's why there is Boot Camp for the Mac. I'm going to ask your thread go to the storage forum for Boot Camp. If it is not recognized there, contact the website for the virtualization package you use use most often. Most have their own forums for such questions.
I agree totally about the drives being a bit of an anathema. I help people fix older Windows computers, 98 and XP primarily, and I wanted a drive to take with me to use with my netbook. And it works fine for that. I'm just trying to see if I can expand the versatility of the unit.
I don't use Boot Camp at all. That's because my goal, when I bought the iMac, was to run a Windows OS and OS X side by side. That's not possible with Boot Camp. Might be possible if you ran Boot Camp, and then a Windows virtual machine to run OS X. My nephew got his native Windows machine (he has more than one and I don't know the specific OS) to run OS X in a virtual machine.
I have finally learned from the Teac website that the unit should work with OS X 10.2, but there's no further info on versions newer than that. I will be sending Teac a message about newer versions of OS X.
Interestingly enough, when I plug the unit in, something in the Mac knows it's there. The unit shows up in System Profiler, but not on the desktop, with or without a valid DOS floppy installed. So the unit is at least somewhat recognized. And that leads me to believe the problem/solution resides somewhere in Leopard.
And going to the Parallels forums is on the list. This is the first time I've ever had a USB device unrecognized by the Mac. When using a Windows OS under Parallels Desktop for Mac, if I plug a USB device in, Parallels appears to have installed a routine that catches the fact that a new USB device has been plugged in, and asks you if you want to connect the USB device to the Mac or to the virtual OS. But, in this case, that message does
not come up. Which leads me to believe that Leopard has to first recognize the USB unit, and then Parallels asks the user how to connect the unit.
And none of this addresses the possibility that Apple completely removed the ability to recognize floppy drives from 10.5.8. And if I can't find a way to contact Apple's tech support, how do I find an answer to this question? After all, the question of USB floppy drives went unanswered in the Leopard thread. π
I guess if the answer was easy to find, I wouldn't be here! π