Re: Should I get two floppy drives?

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Feb 21, 3:31 am, MarkW <mark...@removenospamcomcast.net> wrote:
> I am in the market for a Apple IIe now and notice many of them have
> two of the Disk II drives.  Should I get two drives or just one?  I
> havne't worked with Apple computers for years. I won't do a lot of
> work with it but is the situation with a Apple II that you put the
> floppy in one drive with the OS and in the other drive put whatever
> program you are using?  I remember doing this in the old IBM PC days.

If all you have is 5.25" drives, then yes, it's a good idea. Once you
move to 'expanded' Apple II's, you may find as I do that having 2
drives connected is annoying, since programs will 'poll' both devices
causing unseemly delays.

The two drives are most useful when copying protected software, since
you have to swap disks 35 times otherwise - but copying most software
can be done in 2 swaps on a standard IIe.

As others have mentioned, Apple Pascal is a little intolerable with 1
drive, and actually without some fiddling about is impossible to use
on a IIe with only one drive.

Matt