Re: Apple 3.5" drive questions

[Jeff Blakeney <CUTjblakeney@sentex.net>]

On Wed, 5 Mar 2003 02:03:31 -0500, "GarberStreet Enterprises"
<willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote:

>With a little ingenuity and persistence, anything can and will be
>accomplished.  Have we lost the spirit that made the Apple II to begin
>with. Looks that way to me. Let's stop pushing this around and get
>together and do something about it.

Well, call me crazy if you want but something has been done about it.

People are looking for ways to use floppies to transfer data to/from
their other computers and such hardware does exist.  If you want to be
able to use MFM 3.5" floppies, get a SuperDrive and controller or a PC
3.5" drive and a BlueDisk card and use it.  If you want to use MFM
5.25" floppies, get a PC 5.25" drive and a BlueDisk card.

There are a few cards for the PC, which are now generally hard to
find, that allow your PC to read GCR 5.25" and/or 3.5" floppies.  The
solutions exist, they just aren't necessarily easy to find or to
afford.  For example, I'd love to get that SuperDrive and controller
from you, I just can't afford it.

Also, this isn't the only way to transfer data between machines.  I've
been using a null modem for years and this is one of the easier and
cheaper, albeit slower, solutions.  In fact, my null modem cable is
hooked up to a switch box so that I can connect to my PC with the
click of a switch.

I also have a SCSI card in my PC so I can transfer data using any of
my SCSI drives as well but I end up using the null modem cable most of
the time because it is quicker to get going and I'm usually not
transferring much data.  I only use the SCSI method for large amounts
of data.

One of these days I'll pick up a LANceGS card and then I can network
my IIgs to my PC.  That'll be cool.  In the meantime, I could always
set up my Mac IIci and use AppleTalk to it or just use its 3.5" drive
that is capable of reading GCR 3.5" disk from my Apple II.

So, as you can see, there are lots of solutions.  People just seem to
get hung up on the fact that they can't do it the straight forward
way.  :-)

-- 
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in the
                 Apple II Community on Syndicomm.com
 CUT the obvious from my address if you want to e-mail me