Re: How many times must Apple make such DRASTIC architecture changes?

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@orcon.net.nz>]

In <46GdnWDxMJohIzDfRVn-jQ@comcast.com> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> 
> For example, I could never bring myself to pay Apple $500 for a $90
> disk drive.  I wound up participating in a group buy of Shugart 
> SA400's and cases, and hand-modified the standard "analog" board to 
> meet the Disk ][ interface.  It took over a couple of hours per drive,
> but the satisfaction of not getting ripped off was worth it.  ;-)

I seem to remember reading that Apple paid about US$35 for their 5.25" 
floppy drives (it might have been for the later Alps ones).

Back when my main computer was still an Apple IIe I thought I'd get a 3.
5" floppy drive. I never considered a hard drive since they would 
obviously be too expensive, and 800KB of storage was plenty for 8-bit 
Apple II software.

I walked into my local Apple dealer and asked the price for an Apple 
floppy drive plus controller card. It was about the same as the computer! 
Then the dealer pointed out I could buy an Apple SCSI card and he could 
supply a used 20MB drive in an external SCSI case for slighty less. So I 
ended up getting a hard drive instead. Best purchase I ever made, 
because 12 years later I'm still using the same SCSI card in my IIGS and 
it's worth almost as much today as I paid for it.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz/
________________________________________________________________________
  No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go?

              Kryten, from the Red Dwarf episode "The Last Day"