Re: AEHD drive

[John Townsend <utownje@lexis-nexis.com>]

Wayne Stewart wrote:

> Unfortunately the only way to do that is to connect it to a SuperDrive
> controller. It's a pity in a way that Apple didn't adapt this format and
> went for the more PC compatible 1,44mb. If they had a lot more
> Apple IIs would likely sport HD drives.

Strange, I always thought the reverse was true, and that it was AE who
dropped the ball with that drive.  They considered it more important (and
even touted it in their advertising at the time, as I recall) to have an
extra .16MB of storage on a removable floppy than to have any hope of
interchangability with Macs and PCs.  Your experience may be different, but
I think the number of times that that little bit of extra space on a PC or
Mac floppy would've done me any good is near zero, but I take advantage of
the PC/Mac/A2 compatibility of the 1.44MB format on an almost daily basis.
I can save Apple software on a PC floppy here at work, which I then take
home and read on my Mac or A2 machines, or vice versa.  Ironically, I can
even use my SuperDrives with my AE PC Transporter, but an AEHD drive would
be practically useless with it.  Maybe if AE had had the foresight to make
their drives compatible with existing standards (at a price point that
surely would've been better than Apple's), rather than just try to make them
look a little better on paper, it would have had a more successful product
(and company).

--
John E. Townsend
Sr. Software Engineer          "Machines should work;
LEXIS-NEXIS                     people should think."
Dayton, OH, USA                        -- IBM Pollyanna Principle
utownje@lexis-nexis.com