Re: Old non-SCSI Mac hard drive on IIc?

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <4s4i1r$2qq@blackice.winternet.com>,
Nathan Mates <nathan@parka.winternet.com> wrote:
>In article <4s44gh$3lr@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au>,
>David E A Wilson <david@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au> wrote:
>>No Macintosh devices are SmartPort to my knowledge (on the Apple II the only
>>Apple SmartPort product is the UniDisk 3.5 [this is from the hardware point
>>of view] - all other devices just share the same software interface [also
>>known as SmartPort somewhat confusingly] such as SCSI cards, the Slinky RAM
>>card and Apple 3.5 drives which use the IWM but are not SmartPort devices on
>>the SmartPort bus).

Well, before the IIgs anyhow, the software interface to intelligent devices
went by another name - protocol converter. No one seems to use or know this
term any more though. You can find it in AE's documentation for RAMfactors
and quite a bit about it in their CP/M manual, where it tells you how to
get that OS to use slinkys and 3.5 disks.

>   There's the Unidisk 3.5, the Appledisk 3.5 (platinum), the 3.5 HD
>(High Density-1.44MB), the Chinook external HD for the //c, and
>probably a few more.
>
>>As the Mac 800k and 400k drives do not work on a //gs disk port I doubt very
>>much if the HD20 could be made to function (but I could be wrong :-)).
>
>   All reports that I've seen are that you're wrong, unfortunately.
>The Mac 400K and 800K drives should work fine (my Appledisk 3.5"
>manual said that it should work on both, but the eject button was
>disabled on the mac side), along with a bunch more. I've never tested
>this out for myself, but I'd tend to believe the hardware types at
>Apple. [The marketing folks should be taken out and shot, or at least
>sent overseas to kill some other company.]

The 400K and beige 800K drives only work with a UDC card, they don't work on a
unidisk card or floppy port. They possibly would work on a superdrive card,
but I ain't even gonna risk frying mine to find out. The old drives have the
the cable going directly into the drive mech, while new ones have a PC board
in between, which allows daisychaining among other things. The grey 3.5 
replaced the Mac only 800K, and does work with Macs and IIs, hence the name 
"Apple 3.5 drive" as opposed to "Macintosh 800K" for the beige one.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 I was internet
shack@frii.com                                    when internet wasn't cool