Re: Apple IIe or //e for sale

[Warren Ernst <wernst@gmail.com>]

On Apr 8, 10:50 am, "Paul G." <carb...@egine.com> wrote:
> On Apr 8, 4:49 am, Steven Hirsch <snhir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> > > It's certainly possible.  The cheapest (and I mean that in the
> > > worst way) drives ever made were 3.5" PC drives.
>
> > You are not kidding.  All the more recent 3.5" PC drives I've installed were
> > either defective out of the box or failed almost immediately in service.  It's
> > a real challenge to find one that actually reads and writes reliably.
>
> > Can anyone recommend a brand that is _not_ utter garbage?  I have a
> > significant amount of older things on 3.5" diskettes, and it's getting
> > frighteningly difficult to read it.
>
> > Steve
>
> I have the best luck with Teac drives. I've been able to get some
> defective drives working by pulling and reinserting the little ribbon
> cables. I think the tin plated connections oxidize. I also have a
> couple of reliable USB floppy drives, and parallel port and USB
> Superdisk drives which work with either floppy or 120 meg Superdisks.
> They are handy for occasional use.
>
> Yeah, these pc 3.5" drives are quite a contrast with other types. I
> recently tested a total of 7 Apple III floppy drives and all passed.
> Pretty amazing considering they have had very little use for the past
> 20 yrs.
> -Paul

Funny you'd say that about USB floppy drives: they really do seem to
be built much better than the "regular" floppy drives I've been
getting lately.

-Warr