Re: REQUEST: Apple IIc 5.25" drive to borrow?

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <52he41$ka9@urvile.msus.edu>,
Bill Scheffler <schefflr@news.msus.edu> wrote:
>Nathan Mates (nathan@visi.com) wrote:
>:    Except for the 5.25" drive that plugged into the //e emulation card
>: for some LC-style Macs, you can't access Apple II 5.25" disks from a
>: mac.

>:    Chalk it up to another layer of "shafting backwards compatability
>: and trying to divorce all traces of a good past."

>	However, for the sake of progress, I don't think Macs (or PC's)
>should have to support old (but reliable) hardware standards.

   If the first generation of Macs had had 5.25" drives, ProDOS disk
reading capability, there would have been a much nicer
transition. But, they were fighting off Steve Jobs who had a worse
case of Bill Gates's "640K ought to be enough for everyone" desire to
make the Macs unexpandable and 128K only. [The designers had to sneak in
the ability to up it to 512K.]

   Apple has always been wanting to shaft the Apple II line, starting
way back when with the Apple III line (when they killed off all future
A2 plans, then attributed the A3's failure to its (true) hardware
faults only, not including their shafting of A2 users). The Apple II
line managed to survive against most attempts of being killed off,
only finally sucumbing after Apple refused to spend pennies on
advertising it. 

   Macs being compatible with A2 disks and/or programs has always been
a johnny-come-lately, though if Apple's executives had had one more
brain cell among them, they would have realized the value of their
Apple II line.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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