Re: newbie question-- A2 disks on PC and Apple II Games on the net

[jmholmes@swbell.net (John)]

But even if you don't know the underlying technology, even the 1.2 MB 5 1/4 
drives could rarely if ever reliably write to a 360K floppy that was written 
to by any drive other than the original 1.2MB floppy that formatted it.  And 
if you tried to write to a 360K floppy that was formatted by an original 360K 
drive, then all you could hope for is that you had a backup of the disk before 
you dropped it into the 1.2MB drive...  Fortunately, that was a lesson that 
was VERY quickly (yet VERY HARSHLY) learned by a lot of people going from 360 
to 1.2 drives...


In article <3896385A.1C7CFB1B@ripco.com>, Jonathan Schattke <wizwom@ripco.com> 
wrote:
>ernestls wrote:
>> 
>> With standard PC equipment, it is impossible to format a disk for use with
>> the Apple II. The reason is that a PC uses non-variable speed floppy drives,
>> and an Apple II uses variable speed drives. If you listen real close to the
>> Apple II drives, you can actually hear them change speeds, much like a
>> CD-ROM drive.
>
>(sigh)
>NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
>
>The Apple II uses a soft-sectoring scheme and also proprietary software sector
>recognition.  The NEC based disk controllers use a completely different method
>of disk to computer transfer.  But both drives happen to spin at the same
> speed,
>300 RPM.  The later NEC based drives raised the speed to 360 RPM, but only
>because the controllers became more accurate, and could pulse the R/W head
>faster.
>
>A 1.2 MB 5-1/4 drive still spins at 360 RPM & still has a 300 RPM compatibility
>mode.
>
>Please, if you do not know the technology and don't have the schematics and
>software used, don't answer, as you just spread disinformation and confusion.