Re: Will the ReactiveMicro IIe CF card completely replace floppies?

[Chuck Morris <chuckwmorris@gmail.com>]

On Nov 1, 9:32 pm, savant42 <jbrash...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I tried emailing, skyping, smoke signalling, and channeling spirits to
> contact reactivemicro.com, but to no avail.
>
> I'm considering buying the reactivemicro.com IIe MicroDrive IDE / CF
> controller. My question is, will this completely eliminate my need for
> a working floppy drive/controller? I've been having problems with my
> floppy drives/controllers and would like to completely remove them
> from the picture. Will the RM IIe IDE/CF allow me to do this?
>
> JB

I don't have that card, but I do have one of the early CFFA cards,
which are similar in most respects.  Essentially these cards can be
used as solid state hard drives that can be booted from, and both are
primarily intended for use with ProDOS.  With either, you have to have
some way to transfer software to the card, and that can be done with
CiderPress and a CF reader on any PC with relative ease.  It is also
possible to create bootable CF images that will boot some games that
are HD installable, and software such as DosMaster can be used to
allow a lot of the older Dos 3.3 software to be installed and
executed, with some restrictions.  The short answer then is that yes,
these cards can be eliminate the need for floppy drives, with the
caveat that some software simply can't be installed and executed from
them, but an awful lot of good software can be.  You might also want
to be aware that besides the MicroIDE card, Rich Dreher has a second
generation CFFA under development that should (as of the last report)
be on trace to be released in the relatively near future.  It will
have some features not available in any of the current generation of
cards of this nature, so if you're not in a rush you may want to give
it a look before deciding which card best meets your needs.

Hope this helps,

Chuck