Re: SuperDrive Card (Apple II 3.5" Disk Controller Card) and FDHD Questions...

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Ed Eastman <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:

>Mitchell Spector wrote:
>> Ed Eastman <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:
>>>Just so you know, I have ordered about every different (mac) mechanism 
>>>there is and they ALL work as replacement 800k drives and as A2 Super 
>>>drives, regardless of what Shreve was telling me.
>
>>     That's not entirely true. SuperDrive mechanisms manufactured by IBM
>> (those with a black dust shutter and manual inject) will _NOT_ work with 
>> any Apple II model.
>
>I had forgotten about that one.  Works fine, more or less as a drive 
>itself but has issues with the manual eject button or the GSOS eject 
>command, I don't recall.  One worked, one didn't as I recall.  But I did 
>get my disk back with minimal effort.  :)

    I think you're confusing the older Macintosh 400K and 800K drive (that
pre-date even the Apple 3.5 drive) with the SuperDrive. They were beige
and had no eject button, though there was an ejection motor that would
be tiggered through software command. They weren't Apple II compatible
except with one particular revision of the VTech UDC controller card.

    Back to the IBM drives, it's rather unlikely you had one of these working
on your Apple IIgs. I'm referring to the ones that have a hinged black dust
shutter on the drive door (typically they'd have a Mitsubishi or Panasonic
manufacturing label, and to make things more confusing, I believe even 
a few were made by Sony). To the very best of my knowledge, these are
completely *incompatible* with the Apple II and early Macintoshes.

Mitchell Spector