Re: Hardware musings

["Charlie" <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net>]

"Linards Ticmanis" <ticmanis@gmx.de> wrote in message 
news:4539e0f6$0$27617$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net...
> Ed Eastman wrote:
>
>> Maybe one could convert the FDI data into a bit stream image easier than
>> using even the A2 hardware.  It would have all the bits, the track
>> length and even the rotational angle of every bit pulled from the track.
>>  The only caveat would be the quarter tracks.  Those would need to be
>> extrapolated from the adjacent 'half' tracks.  Hmmm...
>
> The problem with this, of course, is the fact that few people these days
> have PCs which even supports two floppy drives, let alone own a 5.25" PC
> drive. This could be a show-stopper I fear,

The registered version of Disk2FDI does not need 2 floppy drives to create 
an FDI.  It does require a simple 2 wire cable connected to a fast parallel 
port. Many motherboard parallel ports are not fast enough, PCI parallel port 
cards usually are.

The real show-stopper with the PC drives is that they can't read the back 
side of most Apple II floppies even when flipped.

Charlie