Re: PC Transporter, a GS, and a need for HD floppy drives

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

In article <4mec0t$b2v@louie.csun.edu>,  <hbcsc419@huey.csun.edu> wrote:
> I have an Apple IIgs, a PC Transporter, and some XT-compatible software
> that should work on the PCT. The only problem is that the disks are High
> density disks. I know of two ways to get PCT-compatible HD drives running
> on the GS, either use a Blue Disk card and some IBM drives, or a Universal
> Disk Controller and an Apple Superdrive.

The former is correct, but the latter is not.  The UDC doesn't support
the SuperDrive (it might work with it, but only to access 800K disks).

To use a SuperDrive, you need Apple's "Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller
Card" (a.k.a. SuperDrive card), which was released in about 1991 and
discontinued in 1993, so there aren't very many of them around.

There have been rumours of another company releasing a similar card,
but I haven't seen any confirmation of this.

> Is there any other way of getting a HD floppy drive running on my
> IIgs that the PCT can read MS-DOS from?

Yes.  A Floptical drive connected to a SCSI card is able to support
MFM 720K and 1.44MB disk formats.


I use the SuperDrive/SuperDrive Card combination, which works fine
(except that I have to put a disk of the appropriate size into the
drive before starting the PCT, and I cannot change disk sizes without
exiting the PCT software and launching it again).
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand