Re: AEHD drive

[shack@southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <387CD5F0.874ED5A9@lexis-nexis.com>,
John Townsend  <utownje@lexis-nexis.com> wrote:
>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).

They, like everyone nowadays, had no easy/cheap way of getting MFM capability
into Apple IIs. Ever notice how DD MFM disks are 720K and MFM HD disks are
1440K? Same applies to GCR disks, DDs hold 800K and HDs hold 1600K. As you
can see, Apple gave up their better format for the sake of compatibility
with the PC crowd. Doing that meant converting disk hardware to MFM, and
that in turn takes a card for your Apple II.
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