
- #Apple target disk mode mac os#
- #Apple target disk mode full#
- #Apple target disk mode portable#
- #Apple target disk mode Pc#
- #Apple target disk mode windows#
#Apple target disk mode mac os#
It’s fantastic if you want to get into Mac OS X. Still, if you have a new Mac and need to swap files with other systems that have FireWire, it’s a feature that is so intuitive and Mac-like you could use it happily every day. However, the G4 Cube, the G4 tower (if using a separate hard disk controller), and any Mac with FireWire added by a PCI or CardBus card, are not supported.

And if you’ve installed the iMac Firmware 2.4 updater, you can even use it with any slot-loading iMac. You can only use it with the 2000 PowerBooks and iBooks, although, unlike SCSI Disk Mode, some desktop systems support it as well! The Sawtooth and Mystic Power Mac G4s support it, as long as they’re using hard drives connected to the built-in ATA controller. The only big drawback is that the systems that support it in target mode are nowhere near low-end. When you plug it into another computer, it’ll mount on the desktop of that Mac! When you’re done sending files, all you have to do is move the shared hard drive icon to the Trash and unplug the FireWire cable. Once the target computer has booted and the FireWire icon is displayed on its screen, you can plug it into any FireWire-equipped Mac. One other nicety is that FireWire Target Disk Mode is hot pluggable you don’t have to plug the two computers together before you start up the “target” PowerBook or iBook.
#Apple target disk mode windows#
For sharing files between PowerBooks, FireWire provides 100 times the bandwidth of IrDA, the bigwig in Windows notebook computer and Palm PDA file sharing.
#Apple target disk mode portable#
FireWire Target Disk Mode is the fastest and easiest way to send files between a new portable Mac and any other Mac with FireWire. A FireWire icon will appear on the screen, and the hard drive icon of the target Mac will pop up onto the host Mac’s desktop.Ĭompared to SCSI Disk Mode, FireWire Target Disk Mode requires no rebooting of the host Mac and needs only an easy-to-find FireWire cable (it’s half the price of the SCSI Disk Adaptor).
#Apple target disk mode full#
So you’re in the dark if you wanna drop a huge file onto a new PowerBook’s hard drive at full speed, right? Note that the PowerBook 140, 145, 145b, 150, and 170 do not support SCSI Disk Mode.Īpple stopped including SCSI with the 2000 PowerBooks, replacing the SCSI port with two of Apple’s more-modern FireWire ports.Okay, so it’s not true plug-and-play ease, but it’s a really convenient feature if you have an older PowerBook and another Mac with SCSI and can get your hands on the hard-to-find SCSI Disk Adaptors. You can use it like you would use an external drive with little speed loss over using the PowerBook’s drive in the PowerBook. The PowerBook’s hard drive icon should mount on the desktop of the host Mac.Turn on any other SCSI devices if the PowerBook is not the only device on the SCSI chain.A SCSI icon and ID number should appear on the screen.

#Apple target disk mode Pc#
Also, if your PowerBook has no ethernet port, you’d need to buy either an expensive PC Card ethernet adaptor or a speed-squashing LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge. While today you can do the same thing with File Sharing and a $15 ethernet crossover cable, on most models you’re limited to the relatively poor bandwidth of 10 megabit per second ethernet. For consistency I’ll refer to them both as SCSI Disk Mode.)

(Apple changed its name to HD Target Mode starting with the 5300 and 190, since they used IDE hard drives, but it works the same way. SCSI Disk Mode, introduced way back in October 1991 on the PowerBook 100, allows you to mount your PowerBook’s hard drive on another Mac using a funny $30 cable made called the SCSI Disk Adaptor. Apple’s SCSI Disk Mode and it’s modernized offspring, FireWire Target Disk Mode, are excellent examples. Our Fair Computer Company has released some quirky yet useful features in its computer systems and OS, and then advertised them very little – if at all.
