Re: 5.25 in disk drive

[markREMOVE@a2central.com (Mark Percival)]

On 29 Apr 2001, dbfunk@icaen.uiowa.edu (David B Funk) wrote:

>Mark Percival <markREMOVE@a2central.com> wrote:
>>On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, "Mr. Carp" <mr_carp@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I have a buttload of 5.25 disks that I want to use with my IIgs, but I 
>>>need to use the 5.25 drive with a Mac IIci (has a disk drive port) to 
>[snip
>>>or whether ther is even a disk in the drive at all. Any ideas on how I 
>>>can format ProDOS 5.25 disks on my Mac for my IIgs? Thanks
>
>>The Apple 5.25 Drive will not normally work with a Macintosh.  Both
>>the external disk port and MacOS were not designed to support the use
>>of them.
>
>You are right that the standard built-in Mac floppy port won't work with
>a 5.25 drive. However Apple made a special Nubus 5.25 floppy controller
>card to work with those drives.
>
>Look for the card "Macintosh II PC drive card" (820-0213-A). Put one
>of those in your Mac IIci and you can then format and write those
>5.25 ProDOS floppys.

This would work but not with a standard Apple 5.25 Drive.  He would
also have to get an Apple PC 5.25 Drive to go with it.  He would
likely need an old version of MacOS to get it to work (< 6.0.8?).

>However it may be cheaper and easier to just find a 3.5 floppy drive
>for the IIgs. Each one of those holds about twice what a 5.25 floppy
>does and you can easily buy new 3.5 floppys.

140K vs. 800K which is close to 5.7 times the capacity.  eBay often
has 10 or more different auctions going on for these drives with a
final selling price sometimes for as little as $1 (+S&H).  He would
have to make sure that he used DSDD 3.5 disks, the ones with the
single read/write hole on top of the disk.  Standard 2HD disks may
work for his purpose if he covers the extra hole with a piece of tape.
He would then need to download the ProDOS System master to his
Macintosh, ftp://ftp.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/
Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Apple_II/
Apple_II_Supplemental/Apple_II_System_Disk_3.2.sea.bin, and then
expand that to a 3.5 disk and then boot his IIGS from it.  He then
could format his 5.25's.

However if my purpose was just to be able to format 5.25's with as
little fuss as possible, I would just buy a ProDOS System Master from
A2Central.com for $2.

http://www.a2central.com/stuff/applesoftware/filelist.html
http://www.a2central.com/stuff/applesoftware/disks.html

Mark R. Percival - RTC Host - Syndicomm Online Apple II Forum
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