Re: System 6.0.1 MS-DOS FST

[mark.REMOVE.percival@videotron.ca (Mark Percival)]

On Tue, 8 May 2001, "Rodney Hester" <rod3@mindspring.com> wrote:

>I've read some places that the MS-DOS FST requires a high-density 3.5"
>floppy drive, and others that the usual 800K 3.5" GS drive will work -
>anyone with actual experience on this?  (I'd like to be able to read
>DOS-formatted floppies on an 800K GS drive, if possible.)

Rodney,

It isn't possible to read/write MS-DOS disks on an Apple 3.5 Drive
with the standard built in Smartport on the Apple IIGS.  The short
reason is that Apple II DSDD 3.5 disks are 800KB GCR encoded disks.
MS-DOS DSDD disks are 720KB MFM encoded disks.  They are totally
incompatible with each other.

The MS-DOS FST was designed to work with an external SuperDrive/Apple
II 3.5 Disk Controller Card combination.  External SuperDrives are not
too had to come by (eBay has a couple for sale right now) but the
Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card was only sold by Apple for a short
time, is quite rare and almost never appear for sale.

An alternate would be to use a standard PC floppy drive with a ///SHH
Systeme BlueDisk Controller Card.  The bonus here is that PC floppy
drives are abundant and the BlueDisk Controller Card is still
available from ///SHH Systeme.

Move info can be found in an article that I wrote for A2Central.com
located at
http://www.a2central.com/features/2000-11/24-controllers/index.html

Information and products from ///SHH Systeme is available at
http://www.wbwip.com/shh.


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