Re: UniDisk 3.5" on a //e

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:

:>I wouldn't expect an external superdrive to be easier to find than a unidisk.
:>When you consider how few were sold to Apple II users and how few Mac users
:>could justify the cost back in those days ($350ish) when they had a floppy
:>built into their boxes. Factor in how the external floppy port disappeared
:>from Macs in '91 as well. I have two unidisks on hand but had to build my
:>own external superdrive out of parts.

:     Yep, I guess if your talking about official external SuperDrives--
: the ones with yellow LED, ID sticker on bottom and probably for older
: ones, "FDHD" silk screened on front. Those would probably be more rare
: than UniDisk 3.5's for the reasons you list above.

Yepper, that's what I mean when I say external superdrive. I say 800K
with superdrive mech swapped in when I'm talking about homemade superdrives.

:     Mind you, I was just thinking about SuperDrives in general. It is
: pretty simple to swap the Sony mechanism inside an Apple 3.5 with one
: found internally inside a Macintosh SE/30, IIx or up. Unscrew the old
: one, pop in the new, reconnect wires and voila, you have a SuperDrive.
: There are probably tens of millions of Sony SuperDrive mechanism out
: there, and a LOT less analog boards to convert an Apple 3.5 into a
: UniDisk 3.5 drive (the analog board won't fit in there unless you
: leave the top cover off, but you get the idea). What makes a UniDisk
: 3.5 so special is that analog board with the extra logic, otherwise
: it is just a plain old 800K "dumb" drive.

Well all bets are off when you talk stuff that isn't original. For instance,
my 840av has a Sony floppy and a CD600, and no such boxes were factory made.
There's also a ROM 3 signature edition on my desk. An upgraded 800K floppy 
works exactly the same as the real mccoy, but it isn't quite the same. My 
homemade one is as close as you can come since the red LED is gone and an 
amber one is in its place plus the "Apple 3.5 Drive" sticker is gone off the 
bottom, replaced with an "Apple FDHD" sticker.

I wouldn't be able to venture a guess how many unidisks are out there. Since
they were $500 plus $70 for the card back in the days, they weren't growing
on trees. But plenty more sold than superdrive cards and drives I bet.
--
Offsite mail to this host gets nuked.