Re: Commodore drives can be controlled on Apple II serial!

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:

> According to articles I read concerning the BlueDisk controller,
> a PC floppy controller for the A2, that controller deals with the data rate
> maximum of the A2 by letting the drive spin around before reading the
> next block if two blocks could not be read fast enough.  Disks created
> from such a controller would have a different interleave....
> 
> The SuperDrive controller buffers tracks with 32k of cache RAM, I
> think, making it immune to the above problems.

That's correct - when reading via the SuperDrive card, the interleave
factor has no effect.  However, it has a major effect when writing: a
1:1 interleave results in VERY slow writing.  This is the standard
interleave used on a PC.  I got around this by reformatting MS-DOS disks
on the IIgs (at 1:2 by default), resulting in acceptable speed on the
IIgs, but with somewhat of a speed penalty for the PC.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand