Re: 8" disk for Apple II Question

[hlevinsn@rci.rutgers.edu (Hank Levinson)]

"william strutts" <wrstrutts1@home.com> writes:

>Could the Disk II controller even work with them?  I would
>have thought they would be MFM drives.  I know of a few
>old systems that supported them like the TRS-80's.  I do
>believe that they would be around 1.2 meg because the
>TRS-80 machines used to advertise that.

>Did the CP/M card have its own built in controller?  I believe
>it might have worked with CP/M since it was a Z-80 computer
>like the old TRS-DOS machines.

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The 8" disk drives were originally made by the Shugart Company. So 8" drives
are generically known as 'Shugart Drives'. The controller cards for 8" drives
on an Apple2 were made by various firms. The most popular was by Vista. Such a
card was just auctioned off on ebay as a "Mystery Card" (Someone named
hmonster bought it for $41.) Another mker of 8" controller cards was Sorrento
Valley Associates. These 8" systems for the Apple2 were able to run PASCAL,
APPLESOFT BASIC, DOS 3.3, FORTRAN, and CP/M. A disk stored 1.2 MB. I don't
know if this was on one side or two. The 'double sided' drives were unusual.
There are 5.25" drives which use two sides of a disk, WITHOUT flipping. The
bottom side of the disk spins in the counterclockwise direction if the top is
spinning clockwise. For several years I thought that 'Drive 2' of my RANA
ELITE 3 did not work. it works perfectly, once one realizes that it uses
'backward' disks. (The same with a little disk drive from Australia. It also
uses 5.25" disks without flipping them.)

	I hope to try out these 8" drives once I locate a 50 pin cable with
a header one end, and a recepticle like an Apple slot the other end. I'll write
an 'article' for the Big Apple Users' Group (BAUG) when I do.

	Until then, 'Cheers'!

	Hank Levinson (aka hmonster)


****************************************************************************

>--
>--
>William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@home.com - Whatever!

>C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts

>Just hacking away...
>"Wayne Stewart" <waynes@intergate.bc.ca> wrote in message
>3B1653C2.98F45DE7@intergate.bc.ca">news:3B1653C2.98F45DE7@intergate.bc.ca...
>> I've seen 8" drives and controllers advertised in old A2 mags from about
>1983
>> and earlier. I made a bid on ebay for one once but wasn't willing to go
>very
>> high.
>> I think they were up to 1.2mb in capacity and advertised as being
>compatible
>> with DOS 3.3, CPM and Pascal. They never sold many and I think the early
>> hard drives really cut into their sales and the 3.5" floppy killed them.
>>
>> Wayne
>>