Re: Anybody aware of the description of a 19pin connector of an Apple 5.25 Disk Drive ?

[barrym95838 <barrym95838@yahoo.com>]

> 
> Ok, I got it, regardless of the fact that I really owned non-Apple 
> 
> Floppy Disk Drives around 1985. May be these non-Apple Drives were still 
> 
> compatible to these original ones, I can't check this now.
> 
> But this is almost unbelievable that nobody yet created a logic board 
> 
> with an FPGA/whatever which converts the signals/creates the missing 
> 
> signals. May be too much old drives are still available ...

Hi, Peter

I believe that the Disk ][ was one of Woz' proudest moments.  It is a marvel of simplicity, made possible by clever software timing loops that do all of the encoding, decoding, and seeking.  The Apple ][ is unique among many of its contemporaries in that it was possible to disable interrupts with almost no side-effects, making this implementation feasible.  The Ataris and Commodores needed smarter interface hardware, because they couldn't really afford to disable interrupts for any length of time without annoying the user in some way.  The Apple system was primitive, but faster than most of its contemporaries ... credit Woz for that.  It should have been cheaper too, but Apple was responding appropriately to supply and demand at that time.

My first disk drive for my ][+ was a cheaper clone called Lobo, which I bought in 1983.  It was plug-compatible ... I know, I tried it on different systems with the official Disk ][ interface.  My Franklin Ace has internal drives, but the fact that it can run DOS 3.3 unmodified tells me that it has a functionally identical interface as well.

Take care,

Mike