Re: Apple IIGS with PC Floppies

["Bryan Villados" <news002@macgeek.org>]

I think this would only be a problem if you formatted the disk on the IIgs
as MS-DOS FAT format, then tried reading it on a PC with a 1.44MB 3.5"
drive. The PC will try to read the diskette as 1.44MB and not 720KB,
therefore it won't be able to read it.

What I do to work around that is take a piece of non-transparent tape and
cover the high-density hole of the disk. Then when you try to read it on the
PC, the drive will think it's a 720KB disk.

There may also be an issue with the make-up of the disk. Though it may work
right now, it may not later on. So I wouldn't rely on this for long-term
storage.

--- Bryan

"Mr-T" <jonthorp@-no-spam-bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:bLZc8.10326$Uy2.44782@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Greetings,
>
> I discovered something rather amazing the other day when bashing away on
my
> good old Apple IIGS. The older 720Kb 3 1/2" floppy disks are very hard to
> get hold of these days, so I decided to try some 1.44Mb PC floppies.
> Obviously, the computer didn't recognise what was on them because it
> couldn't see the FAT filesystem, so I decided to format them on the Apple.
>
> The IIGS formatted them with no problems at all, being able to store 720Kb
> (or was it 800K?). I copied ALL of my GS/OS system disks to standard
1.44Mb
> disks and worked fine with absolutely no data corruption.
>
> Can this potentially damage my 3.5" floppy disk drive on the IIGS?
>
>
>
>