Re: Floptical Drives?

[florpch@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Lawrence S Lee)]

In article <1993Mar18.143950.12395@seq.uncwil.edu> caroon@seq.uncwil.edu (Craig Caroon) writes:
>
>Hi all!
>
>I am interested in buying a floptical drive for my Apple IIGS.
>I have a few questions first though...
>
>1) is it a good idea?

Not a terrible one... the 21-meg disks amount to just over $1.20/meg. Faster
than regular floppies, stores more...

>2) I know of two from incider that advertise that they will work on
>   an apple IIGS, the AE floptical and the Tulin.  Tulin's drive is
>   cheaper and AE's has an eject button.  Is that basically the only
>   difference? And also will either of these drive ACTUALLY work on
>   a IIGS? Any special drivers required or will the Apple SCSI driver
>   do just fine....?

After calling around, I've found out that you need the floptical mechanism
made by "Insite". In case you're looking in Computer
Shopper, do NOT look at... I think, Hard Drives Int'l/Insight.

>3) What type of SCSI card should I get?  RAMFast is the Best, correct?
>   Is ther much difference in speed between the RAMfast 256k and the
>   RAMFast 1mb?  For that Matter is there much differce in speed B/W
>   the RAMFast and the Apple SCSI card?

I like the RamFAST myself (after fixing all those problems! Aaargh!) If you
want to use the floptical RIGHT NOW, you might want to get the RamFAST,
because the Apple SCSI driver for the floptical has not been released yet
(from what I've read). The new RamFAST 3.00L rom, however, will work with
the floptical. I'd get the RamFAST anyways, since in my experience, the rev
D SCSI never did work any faster for me... yes, I had a DMA-compat ram card,
b ut there was NO improvement in speed. SO weird.

>4) [...]  Is it possible to chain other devices..ie a Hard DRive off of
> the floptical drive?

Yes, you can chain it, if you have the proper cabling and such (no big deal)


Personally, I'm looking toward a removeable myself... the floptical looks
kinda neat, but... <shrug> I'd prefer the removable because of the larger
storage sizes and such. Syquest are good, but I'm eyeing a Bournoulli
myself. (with my current budget, that'll probably have to wait several
YEARS...)  what with the HFS FST, yuo can have >32 meg partitions, and
Bournoulli has 90 AND 150-meg removeables (and, as an added bonus, they can
withstand an 8-foot drop (apparently)).

-- 
Larry Lee                   |
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