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| 5.25" External floppy drives for Macs |
Posted by: funkytoad on 2008-07-15 15:09:33
Are there any known 5.25" External floppy drives that will work with a Mac?
Or would it be possible to modify something?
- ft
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Posted by: tomlee59 on 2008-07-15 15:39:18
ISTR rumors that the Twiggy drives from the Lisa were adapted for use in the earliest Mac prototypes. So, if you happen to have a stash of these drives... 🙂
Adapting a PC floppy drive (of any size) is pretty much hopeless (not impossible, just horribly impractical), assuming that you're talking about a project that spans at most a couple of weekends.
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Posted by: luddite on 2008-07-15 15:41:09
Depends what kind of 5.25" floppies you want to read. Apple made an external 5.25" drive for IBM 360KB diskettes, but it won't read 140KB Apple II or CBM diskettes. For those you're pretty much out of luck.
Important note (stop me if you've heard this one): you should never attach an Apple II 5.25" drive to a Macintosh (unless it has a IIe emulation card installed) as it will result in either the disk drive or the Mac getting cooked (or maybe both).
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Posted by: register on 2008-07-19 08:39:02
I saved an old SCSI 5.25 external floppy drive from being dumped. Unfortunately the Harddisk Toolkit says "drive not ready" on any attempt to mount or format a floppy in this device. If anyone knows a trick to get this thing running, I could provide more detailed information.
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Posted by: Scott Baret on 2008-07-19 09:33:42
Indeed, the Twiggy was supposed to be the Mac's drive. Rumor had it that they needed more capacity than what they could offer.
Look around for a picture of a prototype Mac with a Twiggy drive. It's a guy working at a desk, the pic is monochrome. I think it was taken mid to late 1983.
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Posted by: slomacuser on 2008-07-19 11:20:21
see it here
here it was Apple II's disk drive http://shrani.si/f/3R/sa/4zddQYWm/picture-1.png
and here is twiggy at microsoft developing for mac http://shrani.si/f/1m/E7/4ufaA1bp/picture-2.png
movie is here
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