Re: SuperDrive Doesn't Work on PC Transporter

["Charlie" <charlied@NOSPAMbboard.com>]

"Supertimer" <supertimer@aol.com> wrote in message
20030219050958.04823.00000438@mb-ce.aol.com">news:20030219050958.04823.00000438@mb-ce.aol.com...
> "Bryan Parkoff" <BParkoff@satx.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >    It seems to be strange that SuperDrive is not working toward
> >TransDrive's connector that is reading and writing directly from PC
> >Transporter.  Second SuperDrive is connected to Apple controller card
> >directly.  I can be able to format SuperDrive through Apple controller card
> >directly, but it fails through TransDrive.  Please explain what is the
> >difference and why it doesn't work through TransDrive.
>
> I had this combination too and basically it boils down to this:
>
> The PCT's on-board PC floppy controller expects a PC floppy
> drive.  The Superdrive is not this.  The Superdrive requires an
> IWM or SWIM based controller.
>
> The PC Transporter can format any disk as MS-DOS.  It
> can format a regular 800k IIGS drive in MS-DOS.  However,
> the encoding of such a disk would be GCR which would
> be unreadable on a PC.

Actually, a regular 800k IIgs drive can read/write MS-DOS that is usable in PC,
so apparently it is cabable of encoding in MFM.  It seems to be the controller
that makes the difference.  The PC Transporter is such a controller.  With the
3.5" drive connected to the PC Transporter you can read/write MS-DOS when using
the PC Transporter and read/write ProDOS when using the IIgs (I do it all the
time).  The MS-DOS read/write performs without error when the disks are
formatted on a real PC.  When the disks are formatted on the PC Transporter
some PCs have trouble reading them.  I did a little test of about a dozen
different PCs about 10 years ago and 3 or 4 of them had no problems with the PC
Transporter formatted disks.  The others had varying degrees of problems, with
some not being able to read them at all.

I don't know why a Superdrive connected to the PC Transporter wouldn't work at
least for 800k disks.

Charlie


>
> The Superdrive with SuperDrive controller combination,
> however, is capable of writing BOTH GCR and MFM.  So
> all the PC Transporter knows is that it is writing MS-DOS
> to the Superdrive.  The Superdrive controller encodes this
> in MFM and presto, you have a disk that can be read on
> a PC.
>
> Similarly, if you have a Transdrive on your PCT in Apple
> mode you can write ProDOS disks to it BUT such disks
> would be encoded in MFM, not GCR.  Because of this,
> the disks will be unreadable on a normal Apple II drive
> even though it is ProDOS.
>
> In order to read a disk, BOTH the formatting AND the
> encoding have to be right.