Re: How to use 3.5" PC drives as Apple ][ 5.25" drives?

[david@uow.edu.au (David Wilson)]

nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) writes:
>>So, I would like to know if anybody knows a way to adapt a regular
>>1.44Mb 3.5" PC drive on a Apple ][ to work exactly like a Apple ][
>>5.25" drive.

>   Highly doubtful, especially if you even have the slightest chance
>of copy protected stuff "working." You'd need to design and build a
>new floppy controller at a minimum, and the added complexity of trying
>to make a 3.5" disk act like a 5.25" is going to make this a very
>nasty problem. It'd be way cheaper to buy 5.25" disks for at least the
>next 5 years. [And in 5 years, I'd bet that PC 3.5" drives will
>finally be going near extinct.]

Rubywand wrote:
>     Evidently, you are talking about interfacing a PC 3.5" drive to the
>Slot 6 5.25" controller. It's an interesting idea. Probably, there is a
>way to set this up with some kind of adapter cable and interface card;
>you could even use Side 2 like a "Drive 2".

It is quite doable. My Multitech MPF-III has a nice 40 track direct drive
5.25" disk drive as its boot drive. This is a standard 5.25" drive with a
34 pin edge connector and a small board which adapts the Apple Disk ][ 20 pin
bus to the standard 34 pin one. If I plugged a 720KB drive into this adapter,
I would get 320KB on one side or 640KB if I wired the drive2 enable to select
the second head.

The small board has a PAL, a one shot and a timer chip and assorted resistors
and caps.
--
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia  david@uow.edu.au