<b>Apple 5xxx/6xxx Floppy Fix

Apple has released "Apple 5xxx/6xxx Floppy Fix." It is for Power Macintosh and Performa 52xx/53xx/62xx/63xx series of computers. According to the Read Me file it fixes two main problems:

Slow Floppy Diskette mounting under Mac OS 7.6, 7.6.1 or 8.0

Large File (>700K) Copying to Diskette Failures under Mac OS 7.6, 7.6.1 or 8.0 You may receive a message that says" "The file 'xxx' could not be written because a disk error occurred."

The 5xxx/6xxx Floppy Fix extension can be installed on both Mac OS 7.6.1 and Mac OS 8.0. The extension will not load on earlier system releases.

The technical reason for these problems centers on the fact that "Mac OS 7.6, 7.6.1 and 8.0 install a new updated floppy driver for these computers. The new floppy driver, which is added to the System file in the System Folder, has an internal cache of memory to allow for faster floppy diskette access on these computers. Unfortunately, this cache of memory is not turned on under Mac OS 7.6, 7.6.1 and 8.0 and therefore access to the floppy diskettes is slower without the 5xxx/6xxx Floppy Fix extension installed." Similarly, "the updated floppy driver could cause errors when copying large files to floppy diskettes. The 5xxx/6xxx Floppy Fix adjusts the timing of the driver to avoid this problem."