Re: Initializing 3.5" 800K floppies: AEHD+ vs Superdrive

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

Mark Percival wrote:

> The only problem I have found with certain programs and the Superdrive
> controller has to do with assuming the Smartport entry point address is
> the same as the regular on-board Smartport.  If a program follows the
> published standard of calculating the Smartport entry point then it
> will work.  Otherwise it will call the Superdrive controller self-test
> and not give you the desired result.  This is one of the reasons that I
> have a regular Apple 3.5 drive plugged into the IIgs with my Superdrive
> accessable via slot 6 instead.

It's a bit more complex than that. The Superdrive controller is an
'intelligent' controller - ie. it takes care of all the reading/writing
of drives itself, presenting only the smartport software interface to
the host machine, and not the actual traditional IWM interface signals
to the drives themselves.

In this way, it's similar to the UniDisk 3.5" drive for the IIc/IIe,
except in this case the intelligence is in the drive and not the
controller, making it considerably slower.

If you don't use 'original' copy-protected 3.5" media, it shouldn't be
a problem anyway, and the Superdrive controller has the advantage of
speed, even over the the IIgs disk port.

Matt