Re: Using a 3.5 inch Drive

[Jeff Thomas <a2forever@usa.net>]

Ralph Glatt wrote:

> How hard is it to get a 3.5 drive to work on an 8 bit Apple//? I have
> a //c+ and a Unidisk drive for my //c, but as I understand it, they're
> pretty hard to find. I'm thinking maybe this could be a reason why
> Prodos 8 never took off, because most people didn't have a drive to
> take advantage of using longer programs.

Finding a 3.5 inch disk drive for an Apple II is quite hard to find. Your
typical system came with 5.25 inch disk drives.

To really benefit from using 3.5inch disk drives, you needed at least an
'enhanced' Apple IIe with either Universal Controller from Central Point
Software or the official Apple 3.5 Disk Drive controller card.

Personally, I got two Unidisk 3.5inch disk drives attached to my Apple IIe
with the Apple card. Quite a few of the later applications came on 3.5inch
disk, I can quite happily run AppleWorks without disk swapping or worrying
about running out of space for saving files. Also, a few Beagle Bros
utilities like the "TimeOut" (AppleWorks extensions) series, "Publish It!"
desktop publishing program and "Copy II Plus" which has a larger index of
software it can backup than 5.25inch disk version. And the GUI MouseDesk.

What I find the most useful is for storing transferred Shrinkit files from
my PC to IIe and can be later 'undone' from the disk.

However, I must admit that I have yet to come across a game that comes
only on 3.5inch disk for the Apple IIe, despite the obvious advantages.
That's where the Apple IIGS has the upper hand with the majority of games
running & being only on 3.5inch disk.

Quite alot of software was written in ProDOS 8 for 5.25inch disk drive,
from 1985 onwards nearly everything used it. I would say, the operating
system was a success. Notably, Ultima 1 was rewritten and reprogrammed for
ProDOS which has several advantages over Dos 3.3.

Regards,
Jeff.