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

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com> wrote:

>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.  :)
>
>    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.

    Hmm, I may be in error here... 

    According to this page: http://siber-sonic.com/mac/superfloppy.html
the manual inject SuperDrives ARE in fact backwards compatible with 
Macintoshes that shipped with Sony-manufactured auto inject drives.
In otherwords, I could feasibly pull a SuperDrive from my platinum G3
and plug it into my Macintosh LC. I would assume this extends to the 
Apple II series as well, so maybe the only issue is it not _physically_
fitting inside an external Apple 3.5 case. The eject button is in a 
different place for one thing.

    Another issue, fit or no fit, would be the complaints they have flakey
compatibility with GCR formatted disks. So even if they're electronically
compatibly it would be far from preferrable.

    I'd be interested in hearing if these do work on the Apple II. If they
do, then all these years I've been wrong. :)

Mitchell Spector