Re: IIe emulation card ?'s.

[shack@southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <labelas-2707990012510001@host-216-76-180-27.psl.bellsouth.net>,
Labelas Enoreth <labelas@hotmail.com> wrote:

>>    I'm thinking of adding a IIe emulation card to my Performa 475. I was
>> wondering if I can use a Unidisk 800K drive, DuoDisk drive, or standard
>> 800k apple disk drive with the card? Are there any limitations between
>> drivers for the card and Mac OS software? Is it a good route for IIe
>> emulation on a Mac with a 68040 processor? Any advice you have would be
>> appreciated and helpful.
>
>Hi! I have that card, the only drives I've ever used with it were the
>Apple 3.5 drive (IIgs era) and the Platinum 5.25...I think it may support
>the UniDisk 5.25 but I don't think it supports the UniDisk 3.5. I think
>you can also use an external superdrive if you have it. The DuoDisk is not
>supported though. Oh, and neither is the original Disk II (if you used one
>of those converters to adapt it to the newer smartport type plug)...I'm
>not sure about the mac 800k drive (if that's what you have) but I don't
>see why not, other than the fact that it will be controlled totally by the
>card and thus you will be unable to eject the disk other than via the
>'paperclip hole'

Actually the manual says Unidisk 3.5s work but not to use grey 3.5s. Since
you can use the Mac's 3.5 and it is a superdrive, not a whole lot of use
in connecting a 3.5.

>As for it being good, yes, I'd say it's probably the fastest and most
>accurate method of IIe emulation on a 68k machine, plus, you can use real
>disks, drives, and joystick/paddles, the mouse and all your mac
>peripherals are seamlessly integrated as opposed to roundabout methods
>used in many emulators...Plus, it runs in fast and normal mode as well. (3
>and 1 Mhz, I believe, though it could be 2, maybe...)

An '030 works fine with it too as long as you're not talking a 16 MHz clock
and crippled 16 bit bus. It was pokey in my Color Classic because of that,
and swapping a LC520 board in there with its 25 MHz clock and 32 bit bus
sped up the //e pretty big time.

>Also, it is very easy to get software for it, simply make a prodos
>partition on your HD (which admittedly is probably the most difficult
>step, because it needs to be a 'hard partition' not a soft partition,
>which rules out disk images and the like)...[if you need any help, email
>me, I can probably answer any problems you'll run into setting it up.]
>However, you could also add a small external SCSI drive dedicated to the
>IIe card as well, if you wanted...or prodos partition a zip disk if you
>have a zip drive (which is a pain, but can be worth it)...anyway...because
>you can just download things from the internet and copy them right over to
>the drive, unshrink them using shrink II or unbinscii them...if you need
>to, use DSK2FILE to restore them to an original 5.25 disk if they need to
>be run from the disk, or else just then copy the contents over to the the
>hard drive or a 3.5 disk...and you can even double-click the programs from
>the finder in order to launch them, (and copy, delete, etc...) which is
>wonderful if you've been mac-bound for so long that you don't remember the
>intricacies of prodos...
>
>The only flaw is that the IIe card is not compatible with 32-bit
>addressing or any version of MacOS that forces 32-bit on all the time (7.6
>I think?). And there are a few small incompatibilities that I remember
>offhand with some Apple II software that try to do things directly to the
>hardware...

Righto, so 7.5.5 is the most recent version you can run. The last of the '040s
like AVs and 500 series Pbooks won't run at all with 32 bit addressing off
but not sure any //e card compatible boxes fall into that category.
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