Found this post while trying to search this
@olePigeon. I'll add some details here.
The best I could find is that most 5.25" MO drives of the era shipped with some variety of Software Architect's '
FormatterOne' or '
Disk Drive TuneUp' software. I have some WORM media that is currently shipping to me, with a cost low enough to try out a few that get wasted, as a worst case. I'll keep everyone posted, as there is not much found online regarding this topic, and I'm sure at some point in the future someone will be searching out how to do exactly this. It would be good to nail down the procedures in using these MO drives and variety of disks for future users. (I'm trying to use as many 'key words' in my posts on this so that it can be easily searched and found.)
@NeXT I do have the MO Extension 2.3.8 that came bundled with a Fujitsu drive that I have. That utility and extension does work with all of my 3.5" MO drives (variety of makers), but doesn't seem to work with the two 5.25" MO drives I've recently acquired (HP SureStore Optical 9100mx and Sony RMO-S561 [9.1GB] drives). The extension does nothing, and the MO Formatter utility says the drive is unsupported.
Trying FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, version 2.5.3, 3.0.1, and 4.5.2 all crash when trying to create partitions on the drive (they seem to successfully write the driver, but fail to create a usable HFS partition).
I did manage to get Software Architect's Disk Drive TuneUp 3.1.4 to format, initialize, and create partitions on a 9.1GB rewritable MO disk, both in HFS and HFS+ volume types. The disks are even bootable, both on a 68040 Macintosh LC475, and a PowerPC G3 PowerMacintosh 233Mhz, on both of the above mentioned drives.
@krebizfan Thank you for the confirmation. I had read this but could not find any actual experiences. I do have a copy of the FormatterOne Pro 2.2.2 (downloaded from MacintoshGarden). Can you confirm if yours is at least older than 2.2.2? Should be a version printed on the disk if anything.
Edit: I installed
FormatterOne Pro 2.2.2, and
FormatterFive, versions 3.0 and 4.0.7. All of those say clearly in the help that they do not support WORM media. I tried getting the drive to recognize using
Adaptec Toast CD Pro 4.1.3, and it says 'No supported CD-ROM Recorder attached' or something similar. There was no option in any of the menus for the MO drive I have installed. I guess I'll just have to wait until I receive the WORM media in the mail to see what can and cannot recognize the discs, and how they can be used. Notably missing from the '
Disk Drive TuneUp' documentation is the mention that WORM media is not supported. My hopes are that they added support for WORM in that software. Finger's crossed. If anyone else has some insight it would be greatly appreciated!