Re: Apple II-Or Come on people, It's a 20 year old computer

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <398a45f4.41266065@24.9.0.17>,
Jeff Blakeney <CUTblakeney@home.com> wrote:
 
> On 2 Aug 2000 12:21:47 +0200, pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)
> wrote:
> 
>> However, what once made very good sense won't automatically make good
>> sense forever.  Today MFM disk controller chips are cheap, and MFM
>> disks can store just about as much as GCR disks.  So there's no
>> longer any advantage in using GCR instead of MFM for floppy storage,
>> but there is a disadvantage: the low-level incompatibility.
>
> It may be just me but I've always felt that my GCR floppies on my
> Apple II worked faster than my MFM floppies did on my PC.
>
> This is just my own observation, though,
 
I have a similar observation: 5.25" MFM floppies on a PC work faster
than 3.5" MFM floppies on the same PC.  OK, the 5.25" floppy contains
"only" 1.2M, compared to 1.44M for the 3.5" floppy, but the
difference in reading speed appeared much greater than that.  This
became quite obvious when I, a few months ago, backed up all my old
5.25" PC floppies on CD.
 
So I suspect this isn't as much a matter of MFM vs GCR, but rather
about sector interleaving on 3.5" MFM floppies, which appear to be
less than optimal.
 
> but after having reading about how long it takes a BlueDisk card
> to format an MFM floppy,
 
The formatting speed shouldn't be such a concern -- after all you
usually format each floppy only once.  The read/write speed is what
shoudl concern you.
 
> I think I'll stick to GCR disks on my Apple II until I get a high
> density controller for my AE HD 3.5" drive. :-)
 
So will I -- after all, part of the charm of a vintage computer is
to try to maintain it in original condition.  Therefore my Apple II
will never get an Ethernet card either, even if one should become
available.
 
> Plus, as you said, floppy drives are disappearing.  Heck, even the
> Apple II will have a new Ethernet card before long.  (Thank you
> Joachim, Richard, Sheppy and anyone else involved in getting the
> LANceGS card released as soon as possible. :-)
 
-- 
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