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Re: Latest mac that supported 800k ProDos disks



On 9/3/2012 3:53 PM, D Finnigan wrote:
J. Vernet wrote:

As I remember, it's not a drive harware issue but a controler hardware
issue... In an USB external floppy, there is an USB controler that do
not let the drive being used in 800k (variable rotation speed).

It's very likely that the drive can't spin at more than one speed, that the
motor is fixed.

As far as I know, only Apple computers had variable-speed 3.5" floppy
drives. These were manufactured by Sony.

The Apple drives used GCR at their lowest level, whereas the IBM drives used
MFM.

I believe the 3.5" Apple drive can read/write either GCR or MFM if the controller is designed for both. Consider that a normal 3.5" Apple drive when connected to a PC Transformer can read/write 800K ProDOS disks and 720K MSDOS disks that are compatible with IBM clones. Note also that with the 720K disks the floppy drive speed doesn't vary.

Charlie