Re: AEHD drive

[Wayne Stewart <waynes@intergate.bc.ca>]

You're probably right when you consider it from every angle. However
I could be wrong in my reasoning but I always thought Apple went with
1.44 mfm format so that PCs could, with the right software, read Mac
disks not the other way around. However PCs that are setup to read
Mac disks are very uncommon. On the other hand I always thought
(maybe incorrectly) that it wouldn't have taken much to enable Mac
drives to be able to read either 1.44mb PC or Mac disks in 1.6mb.

Now like yourself I could really care less about the extra .16mb but
I've assumed there was some technical reason why no one produced
a 1.44mb floppy drive you could run off the IIgs smartport. If they
could have done that then they would have been the way to go.
However if that wasn't feasible then if Macs had been using 1.6mb
then there would have been more manufacturers of 1.6mb drives and
they'd likely be much more common as a lot of people would have
bought that drice instead of the 800k drive. All told if I could run a Mac
compatible HD floppy off the smartport that's how I'd prefer to go
whether in 1.44 or 1.6mb.


John Townsend wrote:

> Wayne Stewart wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately the only way to do that is to connect it to a SuperDrive
> > controller. It's a pity in a way that Apple didn't adapt this format and
> > went for the more PC compatible 1,44mb. If they had a lot more
> > Apple IIs would likely sport HD drives.
>
> Strange, I always thought the reverse was true, and that it was AE who
> dropped the ball with that drive.  They considered it more important (and
> even touted it in their advertising at the time, as I recall) to have an
> extra .16MB of storage on a removable floppy than to have any hope of
> interchangability with Macs and PCs.  Your experience may be different, but
> I think the number of times that that little bit of extra space on a PC or
> Mac floppy would've done me any good is near zero, but I take advantage of
> the PC/Mac/A2 compatibility of the 1.44MB format on an almost daily basis.
> I can save Apple software on a PC floppy here at work, which I then take
> home and read on my Mac or A2 machines, or vice versa.  Ironically, I can
> even use my SuperDrives with my AE PC Transporter, but an AEHD drive would
> be practically useless with it.  Maybe if AE had had the foresight to make
> their drives compatible with existing standards (at a price point that
> surely would've been better than Apple's), rather than just try to make them
> look a little better on paper, it would have had a more successful product
> (and company).
>