"Great Hierophant" <great_hierophant@hotmail.com> wrote in message
1109375888.424205.72900@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com">news:1109375888.424205.72900@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
: I'm not sure that the subject is the right label for the concept I am
: asking about. What I want to do is the following:
:
: I want to use a real Apple II with disk programs but without the disks
: themselves. All those disk images on a PC are difficult enough to copy
: back onto disks, some like the .nib images are close to impossible.
: However, isn't it possible to have the PC emulate an Apple II disk
: drive and send a cable from the PC to the disk controller in slot #6?
: After all, the Disk II is something of a dumb device, it just reads
: when it gets the signal and writes when it gets another signal. That
: way an Apple II can run disk images ff a PC as if it were running the
: disks themselves. Even better, the disk can become a lot faster,
: eliminating load times unless they are truly necessary.
:
: Feasible?
Not possible through the disk controller. It is designed
specifically to operate the disk drive only. Now someone
is working on a device that will attach to the controller
and acts like the drive so that you can do this. It is
called the SVD, or something to that effect. I've been
toying with the idea of a serial card FlashRAM drive combo
which will effectively do the same thing. Mine would then
download the DSK image to the FlashRAM and subsequently
perform a warm boot of that slot causing the image to load.
Once finished, you could then send the image back to the
PC and have an updated version of the disk. This will be
a lot of work to accomplish, but once done, it'll do what
I plan on it doing. I hope I can do it. :o) Wish I could
get some help with it.