Re: More Information for MFM Drives

[david@uow.edu.au (David Wilson)]

Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> writes:

>David Wilson wrote:

>> Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> writes:
>> 
>>>There are, at present, no 
>>>USB adapters for any model of the II, and I've heard of none under 
>>>development (I wonder if any II could even handle the high rate of data 
>>>that USB can kick around). So your "goal" has, at present no Apple II 
>>>application, does it?
>>>
>> 
>> Just because USB can run at 12Mb/s does not mean that the Apple // would have
>> to pump data at that rate (which is only 1.5MB/s). USB also has a 1.5Mb/s
>> rate used by keyboards and mice (187.5kB/s) that an Apple // would have
>> no trouble keeping up with. Besides, any sensible design would use an on board
>> uP to handle the USB protocol rather than trying to get the 65x02 to handle it.
>> 
>> Making an Apple // into a USB target would probably be easier than making
>> it into a host.


>So it would be possible to do a USB card for the II, is that what you 
>are saying? Granted that that is the case, since there aren't any yet, 
>of what use is his idea of working on getting MFM drives to talk to the 
>nonexistant USB card on a II? Or is this a case of doing the hard part 
>(MFM to USB) first, since a USB card would be a snap for the II?

I think we need to restate the problem. A user has either a new Mac with
no inbuilt floppy drive or a PC. These systems cannot read or write 800KB
floppy disks. He has an Apple // with and 800KB drive and would like to
transfer data from one to the other. The obvious methods are:

1) Serial transfer (although new iMacs don't have serial ports) using ADT.
2) Ethernet (provided Apple // is a //gs the ethernet card is available)
3) Get an 800KB drive to work on the PC/Mac. This would have to be either
   a USB drive (PC/Mac) or Parallel port (PC).
4) USB from Mac/PC to Apple //. If a USB card were designed for the Apple //
   it could either be a host or a target. If a host it could run a standard
   USB floppy drive and read/write 1.44MB disks. If a target it could emulate
   a disk for the Mac/PC and read/write from/to the 800KB drive (given the
   appropriate software.
5) There are cards like Catweasel that can read/write Apple // disks on a PC.

There are probably many other methods as well.
--
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia