Re: Floptical Drives?

[ericm@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Eric Mulholland)]

caroon@seq.uncwil.edu (Craig Caroon) writes:
>I am interested in buying a floptical drive for my Apple IIGS.
>I have a few questions first though...
>1) is it a good idea?

Depends on what you want it for.  It is not as fast as a hard disk,
nor can it read normal 800K disk. (this may change, I hear)  But it
is 3 times faster than regular disks. (from manual and personal exper.)
I use mine to backup files onto.  It's nice to be able to boot a floppy
and have the same enviroment as with the hard drive.

>2) I know of two from incider that advertise that they will work on
>   an apple IIGS, the AE floptical and the Tulin.  Tulin's drive is
>   cheaper and AE's has an eject button.  Is that basically the only
>   difference? And also will either of these drive ACTUALLY work on
>   a IIGS? Any special drivers required or will the Apple SCSI driver
>   do just fine....?

The Tulin drive can be ordered with both an eject button and motorized
software eject.  Be sure to tell Tulin that when you order.  This is
what I bought.

>3) What type of SCSI card should I get?  RAMFast is the Best, correct?
>   Is ther much difference in speed between the RAMfast 256k and the
>   RAMFast 1mb?  For that Matter is there much differce in speed B/W
>   the RAMFast and the Apple SCSI card?

With the RamFast, get the latest ROM.  I have 3.0L.  I believe there
is a driver floating around for the Apple HS card.

>4) I dont know much about SCSI devices so bare with me; Is it possible
>   to chain other devices..ie a Hard DRive off of the floptical drive?

Sure can.  The Tulin floptical has 2 scsi ports.  To save myself some
headaches, I ordered my floptical without internal termination.  I
use an external terminator to cap the end of the bus.

>5) Any other info. is welcomed.  Anyone who actually has one on their 
>   IIGS, please tell me how you like it...

I like the drive, but I think Tulin could have done a little better
job with the case they put it in.  The faceplate isn't completely flush
on the drive and it is 50% wider than an Apple 3.5 drive.

>6) Do these drives read and write optically or do they just track optically?

I believe it's optical tracking, but magneticly writen.  (someone
correct me if I'm wrong on this)

-- 
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  Y_,_|[]|   Eric Mulholland
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