Re: HD floppy on a IIgs?

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

mojoehand wrote:
> I know that you need a special interface card to support a 1.44 MB
> floppy drive on a IIe. Assuming I had a compatible drive, does the
> IIgs Smartport support HD drives?

Unfortunately, no.

The peripheral card that does support 1.44MB floppies is the Apple II
3.5 Disk Controller Card, and they are currently scarce.  (An HD drive
is also required, of course.)

This is true for both the //e and the IIgs.

> In other words, can I take a HD drive from a vintage Mac and use it on
> the IIgs? Can I format, read and write HD floppys with it? If so, is
> it possible to read/write MSDOS disks?

Reading MSDOS formatted disks is supported by GSOS, but writing requires
additional software (check Peter Watson's), even with the controller
card.

On the //e, the simplest solution is to use CiderPress to allow a PC
to read and write ProDOS-formatted 1.44MB floppies, which can then
be used directly on a suitably equipped //e.

-michael

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Home page:  http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/

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