Patching Apple's Drive Setup 1.x

Since the release of IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) harddisks (the first Macintosh with IDE drives was the Performa 630 series), Apple needed to supply a harddisk formatter utility other than HD SC Setup, which only formats SCSI drives. This new utility is called Drive Setup (current version is 1.4).

Apple recommends using Drive Setup on the following systems:

- Power Macintosh systems (including PowerPC-based Performa systems).
- PowerPC-based PowerBook systems, including PowerBooks equipped with PPC Upgrade.
- Macintosh 580 and 630 series systems.
- PowerBook 190 series systems.

A number of people have inquired whether Drive Setup could be patched so that it recognizes all drives. As a matter of fact Drive Setup recognizes a lot more drives than HD SC Setup, most notably a number of removable drives. Apple does not state which drives are recognized but a list is contained in one of Drive Setup's resources. If you are curious about how to find this list or want to know how to make Drive Setup recognize your drive, read on.

Recently the following post appeared in comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage (spelling was corrected):

From: George Graves <gmgraves@slip.net>
Subject: Re: Hacking Drive Setup
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 17:07:22 +0100
To: timmyd@best.com

timmyd@best.com wrote:

> Somebody mentioned, a while ago on comp.sys.mac.advocacy, that 
> Drive Setup could be hacked using ResEdit to format/initialize/partition 
> ANY SCSI-compliant drive.  I poked around Drive Setup's resource fork 
> using Resorcerer, and found a bunch of 'fSCR' resources which look like 
> they contain all of the initialization parameters for all of the drives
> that Drive Setup currently supports.  The next question is: what is the 
> meaning of this information? 
>
> And how do I add a new entry for my own drive?
> 
> If anybody has any suggestions, feel free to send them my way.
> 
> Tim DeBenedictis

I think I figured it out. Anyway, it worked for the drive I added.

Try this:

There is a registry called "fSCR" in the "Apple Drive Setup"
application which can be accessed with ResEdit. In this registry
are the names and model numbers of Apple-qualified drives. It
is very easy to add unsupported drives to this registry.

1) Use a utility such as SCSI Probe to view the model number 
   of the drive you want to add.

2) Open ResEdit and from inside open the "Drive Setup" app.

3) Double click on the resource panel named fSCR. You will see
   a bunch of harddisk names and models. Find one which is 
   similar to the one you wish to add (if you have a Fujitsu 
   SCSI drive select a Fujitsu SCSI drive in the list).

Here you see a ResEdit screenshot. Visible is the fSCR resource containing the list of drives recognized.


4) Select Command -K (new resource)

5) Open the New resource and the resource of the 'similar' 
   Fujitsu drive. Copy and paste the contents of the existing
   Fujitsu drive resource window into the new resource window.

6) Close the resource window. Now, choose Command-I (get 
   resource info). Put the name and the model number of the 
   new drive in place of the default resource name just as 
   all the rest appear in the list of supported drives, but 
   omit the quotation marks. Give the new resource a line 
   number which places it at the bottom of the supported 
   drives list in fSCR. Close the resource info window. 

7) Close fSCR, and save. Your added disk will now be 
   recognized by the Apple Drive Setup application. I 
   believe you can add all drives of a given manufacturer
   (using Fujitsu again as an example) by naming the resource
   "Fujitsu,*", but I haven't tried it yet.

George Graves

Since I own a Powerbook 165 and only have access to an old trusty Quadra 900, I couldn't verify the above until I discovered Wish I were... 2.0 by Martin Blitz, a Control Panel and Extension that provide a method for a system to identify its hardware as another hardware type, via the Gestalt "mach" selector. In other words; it allows you to specify what identity your Macintosh should report to the MacOS when asked for.

So I told my Quadra 900 to be a Performa 630 and I could start Drive Setup.

I got hold of a Conner CP3540 (540 Mb.) drive and tried the above. At first I couldn't get it working until I selected the 'DEC,*' resource as the source for my new 'CONNER,CP3500-540MB-3.5' resource.

Drive Setup did recognize and initialize the drive without any problems.

So it appears that you might have to experiment with which resource you take as your template.

Awesome.

I call on all readers to test it also and Email me about your findings.

Here are some posts from usenet that explain a lot more.

WARNING: Although simple; this patch is not for the faint of heart. Using ResEdit can and will cause damage to your programs and/or data if not properly used. If in doubt, don't do it.

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