Which drive/controller/firmware to read old disks ?

[Zero dB <no@email.com>]

Greetings all, 

This will be a cinch for most of you, but I am not that well-versed on
the apple ii hardware since I was a child when i was introduced, and
mostly played games (as I continue to do now)

However.  A friend of mine sent me some disks that may have some very
old, very valuable art projects that I want to access, but the disks
don't seem to want to read in my duo-disk. 

He sent me a bunch of "scotch 744" diskettes, which i think are ss/sd,
and some apple master dos 3.2 disks in a plastic sleeve. 

I'm assuming that I can't read these older disks with my duo disk due
to both the controller firmware AND the drives being limited to 140K
per disk.  I believe I need an older disk ii and controller with old
firmware so that can read 113.75KB disks. 

Does this sound right ? 40 of 40 disks failed to be read. I tried to
catalog in cii+ and get an io error. I forget the eror but can
retrieve if needed. 

It's fairly important that I read these disks and be able to copy them
to a slot 6 dos3.3 formatted disk. 

Am I on the mark with the old disk @ 113.75KB and the hardware needs
to access it? 

THANKS!
Jayson

jayson.anderson AT REMOVETHIS gmail