Re: New to the Apple IIGS, unknown card in slot 7.

[a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

"Matthew S. Carpenter" <msc1983@mac.com> wrote:

>    I recently received an Apple IIGS.  I'm still waiting for the monitor to
>get here, but while I'm waiting, there's this card that I wish to ask about.
>The IIGS had these two cables coming out of the side of the case, labeled 1
>and 2.  They both have the same ports on them, and these ports are identical
>to the floppy disk port.  If the card were two slots over I'd have enough
[snip]

    From your description it sounds like a VTech Universal Disk Controller
(UDC) card. 

>What I'm wondering, is what this card is

    It's a specialized Apple II floppy disk controller that worked with
both 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drives. These included the Apple 5.25
(140K) and compatibles, the Apple 3.5 (800K) and compatibles
and in some revisions of the card, the Apple UniDisk 3.5 (800K)
"intelligent" drive. What made it unique is it also supported the
beige Macintosh 400K and 800K 3.5 drives without eject buttons.
It *may* also support the Chinook IIc Smartport hardisk, I don't
quite remember.

>and if I could move it over to Slot 5 and have what ever it is work 

    Slot 5 or 6 would be the most ideal place for it to live. However
it's really superfluous in an Apple IIgs as the built-in floppy port (the
back connector with D-19 female plug) already supports the same
5.25 and 3.5 drives. In fact, you can even use both types of drives
on the same port by daisy-chaining them.

    The only reason you might want a UDC in a IIgs is if you wanted
multiple floppy drives attached, had a damaged disk port or just 
wanted to connect up an older Macintosh drive (which incidentally
would require a paper clip to eject disks manually).

    The card is really only valuable if you have an Apple IIe. These
UDC cards are on the rare side so could you probably trade it for
something equally as rare (say a DMA SCSI controller).

>I have put up some pictures of the card at the following web address:
>
>http://homepage.mac.com/msc1983/PhotoAlbum7.html

    Yep, definitely looks like a UDC card from what I can recall.

Mitchell Spector
a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca