Frank Townsend wrote:
Looking at the Trackstar E manual, I read the following: "The Trackstar Disk Adapter Cable connects your Trackstar E to the 360k MS-DOS disk drive(s). Its presence allows the 360k drives to read and write Apple floppy diskettes. This will in no way interfere with the operation of the 360k dives(s) under MS-DOS." "Note: 1.2 Mb 5.25" disk drives cannot read Apple diskettes- even if they are capable of reading MS-DOS 360k software." Could some wise person explain this to me? I thought, obviously incorrectly, that MFM drives could not decode GCR encoded diskettes? But is this untrue for 360k drives? I'm confused.
The IBM PC drives are neither MFM or GCR. Most disk drives are really analogue devices and the disk drive controller in the computer determines the format. The controller IBM used in the IBM PC uses MFM encoding, the one Apple used uses GCR encoding.
By using a different disk drive controller like the one on the Trackstar you can use an IBM PC drive to read Apple II disks, or by using a PC Transporter you can read IBM PC 720KB disks on an Apple 3.5 Drive.
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Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rojaws/
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"But what is it good for?"
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM
commenting on the micro chip, 1968