Re: Creating Apple2 disks on a Commodore 64?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

dat95pkn@mds.mdh.se (peter karlsson) wrote:

>A friend of mine has an Apple2 and a disk drive, but hasn't got any
>possibility to create disks for from software downloaded via the Internet. I
>have a Commodore 64 and have such hardware for my PC and it. I know that the
>Apple2 uses GCR, albeit somewhat different from what Commodore uses, on its
>disks aswell, so I wonder if it is possible to:
>
>* Create an Apple2 disk using any of the Commodore 64<->PC transfer software
>* Read/write Apple2 disks on a Commodore 64
>* Read/write Commodore 64 disks on an Apple2
>* Use the hardware I have to hook up my Commodore equipment to my PC to
>  hook up Apple2 equipment?
>
>Any help would be appreciated.

It is possible, yes, but you need special setups to make it work.  The
Spartan, an Apple II+ emulator for the Commodore 64, can do
exactly this.  The emulator was sold with a special EPROM chip
that you used to replace one inside your 1541 drive.  From then on,
the Spartan could access Apple II+ 5.25" disks on your 1541 drive
attached to your C64!  The Spartan was reviewed in one of the
issues of Compute's Gazette in 1986.

The second setup is a 1541 drive on an Apple II.  There used to
be a special cable that was sold that connected the 1541 drive to
the internal game port of the Apple II (not the external one, but
that should be possible too since the two ports carry the same
signals).  With a 1541 drive on the Apple II, you can read Commodore
format disks on the Apple.

The last possibility, running a 1571 drive on the Apple II disk
port (called the Smartport, a daisychain port that supports all
kinds of disk drives on the Apple II), has been explored by the
folks at CMD.  They concluded that it was possible to run the
drive off this port, but they didn't see sufficient interest to pursue
the project.