Re: 8" disk for Apple II Question

[apple2pd@garp3.icaen.uiowa.edu (ground.ecn AppleII Librarian)]

In article <3b161c14@news.iprimus.com.au>,
Mark Cummings <NOTfigjams@primus.com.au> wrote:
>I am just curious to know if the was ever an 8" floppy disk drive made for
>the Apple II.
>Why I ask, is that a friend I was speaking to said he remembers using an 8"
>disk on an Apple II at school. Unfortunately he is not "Apple literate" so I
>wonder whether it was even an Apple he was using. I've been following Apples
>for nearly as long as they've been around and never heard of such a beast.
>
>If there was one, what sort of capacity and OS did it have ?
>

Yes, 8" floppy drives were available for the Apple][ and Apple][+
computers.  But Apple C. never made or sold any.  I bought my first II+
system loaded with 8" and 5.25" Apple II drives.  The 8" drive was a Lobo
dual drive enclosure with power supply and standard Shugart 800/801 8"
drives.  The disks were standard 8" IBM 3740 format (77 trks, 26
sectors/trk, 128 bytes/sector = 256,256 bytes total).  The controller was
a SVA Disk 2+2 controller.  Supported OSes were Dos3.1, Dos3.2, CP/M and
Pascal v1.0  With an updated ROM Dos3.3 and later Apple Pascals were
supported.  I never used ProDOS as SVA had gone out to lunch by then, but
I believe some former employee updated support for ProDOS (newer ROM?).
After the Disk 2+2 controller SVA also sold the ZVX4 Megabyter which
supported Shugart SA800/SA850 drives and Doses 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, CPM and
Pascal in both single and double density drives.  I think another company
also produced a Shugart SA8xx controller for 8" disks.

Oh, my first II+ system cost over $5000.00 in 1979 ;-)  Maybe closer to
$8000 with additional buys in the next couple months.

  --Steve 
-- 

 --Steve  (apple2pd@ground.ecn.uiowa.edu)