Re: 8" disk for Apple II Question

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

> Mark Cummings <NOTfigjams@primus.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> I am just curious to know if the was ever an 8" floppy disk
>> drive made for the Apple II.
 
Yes, there was.  A former job of mine got an Apple II in the early
1980'es and then added a pair of 8" floppy drives, mostly because
they offered about 500K disk size as compared to the 140K of the
standard Apple II disk drives.  This Apple II was used to record
data from photometers in a research lab.
 
These 8" drives were MFM drives, and had a special disk controller
card inserted into the Apple II.  The software coming with these disk
drives supported Apple DOS 3.3 and Apple (Softcard) CP/M.  They were
quite expensive, too expensive for me to get them for myself.
 
However, I had good use for these 8" floppy drives also for my own
Apple II: besides its own 500K format, those 8" drives also read
standard 8" SSSD floppy disk (the only standard floppy disk format
which ever existed in the CP/M world).  Earlier, when buying CP/M
software I had to try to get ot on Apple CP/M disks, but from now on
I could order it on standard 8" SSSD disks and then transfer the
files to Apple II disks on that machine, so I could use it on my own
Apple II.  I ended up buying about ten 8" SSSD disks like that, and I
still have them (although I no longer have access to any equipment
which can read them).
 
Unfortunately I don't remember the brand of these 8" floppy drives
for the Apple II.  But I can assure you that they did exist.
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
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