Re: Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card (SuperDrive) compatibility...?

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Blake  Patterson" <blakespot@gmail.com> wrote:

>I just got my new in box Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card and
>new-in-box 3.5" SuperDrive.  I had two 3.5" drives before (800K) and
>had to set one aside and use the new 1.44MB floppy drive and an 800K
>(max 2 drives on the card).  If the main drive is the 800K, will there
>be compatibility issues w/ certain apps / games?  Would I do better to
>put the card in slot 7 and hang only the new drive off it and leave the
>2 3.5" drives on the SmartPort for better compat?

    Compatibility issues do come into play with some pieces of software,
especially hard-coded games and European demos. Copy-protected
disks may run into issues as well. So yes, it makes sense to leave your
Apple 3.5 drives (800K) connected to the built-in disk port and the
SuperDrive (1.44 MB) by itself to the controller card.

    On my setups, I've installed the Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card in
slot 6 (which is set to 'Your Card') and left both my Apple 3.5 and 5.25
connected to the built-in disk port. The only catch is when I wish to 
use the 5.25 drive (which is rare) I go into the Control Panel and 
switch to "Smart port" and do a warm-boot.

    Incidentally, once everything is setup, I'd suggest you install the
MSDOS.FST and then download Peter Watson's "MUG!" utility.
This will give you full read/write access to PC floppy diskettes;
just remember to format diskettes _with_ a volume label or the 
MSDOS.FST will ignore them.

Mitchell Spector