Re: High Density FD's

[Jeff Lemke <lemke@terra.cira.colostate.edu>]

Randy Shackelford wrote:
> 
> In article <5sbhhq$4pa$1@darla.visi.com>, Nathan Mates <nathan@visi.com> wrote:
> 
> >   Yes. You will need to acquire an "Spple II Superdrive Controller
> >Card", which is unfortunately quite a lot rarer than the actual drives
> >appear to be. That's thanks to Apple who didn't bother marketing them,
> >or even put their heart behind selling the few that they did make.
> 
> Actually the drives aren't easy to come by either. I've never turned one up.
> I gave up and converted an 800K drive. External floppies weren't a big seller
> on Macs once internal hard disks became standard. On top of that, floppy ports
> started to vanish off Macs in '91, when the card debuted. My Quadra 700, which
> came out in '91, doesn't have one. So there was no Mac market to speak of for
> the drives. And I expect most people thought like I did back then, that it
> was hard to justify spending $109 for the card and having to replace my
> floppy drives to make use of it. But like many other things which you can't
> justify getting at one time but you realize that they're hard to come by and
> worth getting, now this card is rather sought after. I found a card and bare
> drive mech in csa2.marketplace a coupla years ago and got 'em.
> 
> >[Coulda been worse and squelched like the Apple II Ether*net* card the
> >got the nasty axe just before 6.0.1 was to be released. (And for those
> >who'd rather try to be pedantic before they'll admit that Macintosh,
> >Inc has ever once royally f****ed up, Ethertalk is simply Appletalk
> >over Ethernet. The card that Apple axed *WAS* an Ethernet card; the
> >software added in any functionality for Oddball network protocols)]
> 
> Localtalk is a wiring system, as is ethernet. But it only supports appletalk
> packets, due to the way the software is written. The talk in early '93 was
> that the ethernet card would only support Appletalk, and there would be no
> hooks to allow other software to support other protocols. That makes it an
> ethertalk card in effect. If you can find documentation which says that the
> card would do anything more than ethertalk, let's see it.
> 
> >   If you can find such a controller card can use that drive on
> >an Apple II. If you can't, you know where to lay the blame.
> 
> Yep, the blame lies with people who were reluctant to make the investment
> when they were available. They were in all the Apple product catalogs from
> that time. I got several such catalogs in the mail, and they clearly showed
> that card along with all the other II products. Of course Apple haters who
> boycotted dealers and didn't bother keeping up with current products would
> have no way of knowing about 'em.
> --
> Randy Shackelford
> shack@frii.com



Thanks for the recent history of high density floppies in the Apple realm.  I 
enjoy detailed replies.

Since my Apple usage is more for a hobby than for hard core usage, I don't 
think I can justify $100 to $125 for a single board to add to my IIgs (plus 
more for the floppy drive) even now.  I had no idea they were still that pricey 
or hard to find, and it surprised me.

It's similar to some things for the old TRS-80/Tandy computers - those are the 
computers I was introduced to first - and I still frequent the comp.sys.tandy 
newsgroup.  There were some things Tandy released either in low volume (like a 
cut sheet feeder for a DWP-II daisy wheel printer) or released very late in the 
game, like an MMU (memory management unit) in 1989 for the Tandy Model 6000 
(Tandy's final 68000-based Xenix business computer.)  In two years, I've only 
run across one person each who had those items, and they wanted major dollars 
for them, even though the equipment is of dinosaur vintage and the demand for 
the items is actually low.

There is one difference I've already noticed between this newsgroup and the 
Tandy newsgroup.  The "flaming", if I use the word right, or short tempers.  Oy 
vey.  In the last two and a half years, I haven't seen anything like this on 
comp.sys.tandy.  I'm coming in as an outsider with a new-found interest in 
Apples, and I'd like to learn more about them.  It's informative and nice to be 
able to read people's questions and replies about things, but insults flying 
back and forth and back and forth are unpleasant to read even for an uninvolved 
third party.  Certainly there is freedom of speech, but we all gotta live 
together somehow.

Anyway, sorry for the soapbox stuff.  I'm off it now, and I am looking forward 
to reading more interesting Apple chat.