[no subject]

According to the controller, it has the 6502 on-board as well as the
SIWM chip.  A Macintosh, similarly, has the SIWM chip on-board.  I
nabbed three IIGS drives at an auction and each of them work fine
with the controller.  I tested out a Mac 800K drive, which worked
fine with the CPS UDC, and it wasn't detected.  I connected a bare
Macintosh SuperDrive and it wasn't detected.  I then mounted the
Macintosh SuperDrive in one of the IIGS drive cases and the drive
was detected.  I popped in a 720K MS-DOS and verified blocks with
Copy II Plus.  No errors.  I popped in a 1.44MB MS-DOS and verified
the disk with no problems.  I tested out an emergency Apple II 800k
disk and it verified with no errors. 

Then came the acid test.  I tried formmatting a 1.44MB disk and it
gets about (what sounds like) 10 tracks into formmatting and returns
an error.  Kindly the drive ejects the disk.

Suddenly things became VERY clear.  Apparently the mainboard beneath
the drive (mounted inside the IIGS drive case) is handling tasks like
motor speed, and the likes, during a format command, thereby limiting
the drives capabilities.

Is there ANY way I can get the Apple II 3.5" controller to work with
the SuperDrive as a SuperDrive, aside from buying one at a ghastly
price?

I was thinking I might be able to tweak the pinouts, but after analyzing
the data carried on each of the pins I've come to the conclusion it isn't
possible. 

I'm stumped.  Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks!

/\/\ichael

replyto: mkelsey at eecs.wsu.edu