LS120 Caveats

Can you use an LS120
as your system's primary floppy? Yes, but...

Dear Graeme,

It was very interesting to read your article regarding SuperDisk drives from October 1998. I have since actually tried your suggestion of having only a single bootable SuperDisk on a PC, and no floppy drives. Although it turned out to work quite well under both Windows 95 and NT 4, I no longer recommend this set-up. I realized it has certain limitations.

For instance, some hardware specific devices will not work with it, such as Smart Card readers for Digital Cameras. Olympus has a device that looks like a standard floppy disk, into which you insert your Smart Media card. This then goes into the floppy drive and with an appropriate set of drivers allows you to read the pictures of the Smart Card as if it was a floppy. This does not seem to work with the LS120, but only with "proper" floppy drives.

Also, some software packages contain "images" of a 1.44 floppy disk, which should be extracted to a floppy. Compaq distributes its ROM and software updates this way. Again, these will not extract to an LS120 even if you insert a normal 1.44 floppy in the drive.

And last, Microsoft various Upgrade products for Windows 95, Office 97, etc, look for a previous installation. If they can not find a previous product installed, they will look for proof-of-ownership: disk 1 of the original software inserted in drive a. If you use an LS120, at this stage the installation would hang and the PC would need to be rebooted, whether you do or do not have a floppy inserted. The only way I found to bypass this and continue with the installation was to physically disconnect the LS120 before commencing installation.

As result, I currently recommend the use of SuperDisk only as an additional drive but not instead of the original floppy.

Thanks for the information and advice,

Isaac Heinrich
c...@writeme.com

PS - I understand that Imation is currently shipping its USB SuperDisk for the iMac only, but if you know of any manufacturer that ships a USB SuperDisk for PC I would be very much interested to hear about it.

For more LS-120 info:

• http://www.usaent.com/ls120faq.html
• Or try an Altavista search for LS-120 installation tips and driver details.
• Setting Drive Letters: How to assign your SuperDisk as Drive "A:"