Re: 3.5" inch floppy drives on a //e?

[spector@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article mdolecki@csi.compuserve.com (Mark Dolecki) writes...
>Hi folks.  Is there a way to hook up a 3.5" floppy disk drive to an enhanced
>Apple //e?  I have two 5.25" Disk II drives already, but I have tons of 3.5"
>floppies lying around that I'd like to be able to use.  Sorry if this is a
>really dumb question but I just got the Apple a couple months ago! :-)

	Yes, although you'll need to add a special drive interface card
capable of handling a 3.5 drive. Apple Computer produced two such cards,
one is the UniDisk 3.5 controller (known as "Liron") and the other is
the Apple II 3.5 (FDHD) disk controller. The Liron card will only work
with the Apple UniDisk 3.5 drive, a "smart" 800k external drive produced
for the Apple //c mostly. The drive is referred to as a "smart" device 
because it contains extra circuity (65C02, RAM) to process read inform
before sending it off to the computer. For this reason it's rather slow, 
but still faster than any 5.25 drive. You can _only_ connect a UniDisk 3.5
drive to the Liron card, 5.25 drives including other types of 3.5 drives
will not function connected to it.

	The Apple II 3.5 controller is more recent, and it allows you
connect a wide range of floppy drives. It can connect the (smart)
UniDisk 3.5 800k drive, the (dumb) Apple 3.5 800k drive used on the IIgs
and older Macs as well as the Apple SuperDrive 3.5 1.44mb drive. I believe
the controller will also work with Apple 5.25 drives. The Apple II 3.5
controller uses a SWIM chip, simular to the IIgs's IWM chip, and works
in both the Apple //e and IIgs. It's main purpose is using 1.44mb 3.5
drives on an Apple II.

	One other option is the Universal Disk Controller (UDC) by
Laser. It works with Laser's own 3.5 drives, and quite possibly the
UniDisk 3.5. I'm uncertain, but I've heard rumours you can use the 
older Macintosh 400k drives with it as well (Someone might want to
correct me on this). All three controller cards, as well as the 3.5
drives, have been discontinued. Your best bet is calling a reseller
(Sun, Sherves, Alltech) or searching comp.sys.apple2.marketplace...

>Thanks in advance,
>Mark Dolecki                    CIS:  70004,3235
>mdolecki@csi.compuserve.com     I don't speak for CompuServe!

Mitchell Spector
m_spect@pavo.concordia.ca / spector@vax2.concordia.ca