Re: How many floppies can I use with a Apple IIe

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de>]

MarkW wrote:
> I am interested in purchasing an Apple IIe and am wondering how many
> floppies I can attach to one.  Many I see on eBay have a Disk II
> Drive.  I see many also have the Apple 5.25'' drive or the Unidisk
> 3.5".  I just purchased a Macintosh Plus and a Apple 3.5"
> External-A9M0106 drive.  I know if I get a Superdrive controller it
> will work with the Apple 3.5" External 
> My question:
> I'm kind of new to the Apple II but is it possible to use all 3 of
> these drives?  Do I have to do anything to set up the system if I put
> a Superdrive controller in it?

1.) There are 7 Slots in the Apple
2.) Each slot, with the exception of slot #3, can hold pretty much any
card (slot #3 has conflicts with the memory expansion/80 column card)
3.) Floppy drive controller cards generally support a maximum of two drives.

This boils down to a maximum of twelve drives. I doubt you will need
that many.

That said, the most common configuration is to connect a pair of 5.25"
drives in slot 6, put the 3.5" drives in slot 5, and put the hard disk
(if any) in slot 7. Many programs have slot numbers hard-wired into
them, especially slot 6 as location of 5.25" drives is pretty much a
done deal unless you want to be incompatible with 90% of existing software.

All the 5.25" drives sold by Apple (Disk II, Duodisk, Unidisk 5.25",
Apple 5.25"), as well as all clone drives that I know of, use an
electrically identical connector that only varies in shape, so you can
use a simple adapter if needed to connect them to any 5.25" controller.
The controller cards for 5.25" drives are also electrically identical.

The same is not true for 3.5" drives, of which three variants exist:
Unidisk 3.5" (smart 800k drive), Apple 3.5" (dumb 800k drive, for IIgs),
and Superdrive 3.5" (dumb 1.44MB drive). The Unidisk needs a Unidisk
card (aka "Liron Card"), and the Superdrive needs a Superdrive card. In
addition, AFAIK at least two third-party controllers exist.

-- 
Linards Ticmanis