68kMLA Classic Interface
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| Dumb Disk Drive Question | |
| Posted by: Mac128 on 2009-06-30 17:55:20 How many Disk drives can be attached to an Apple II? I know some later Apple IIc's could support up to 3 total (with two external daisy chained), and the Apple III could use up to 4 (including the internal). But in general could more than one drive card be installed in an Apple II to drive more than 2 Disk IIs? Or how many UniDisks could be daisy-chained together? I told you it was dumb. | |
| Posted by: II2II on 2009-06-30 18:05:54 It's not a dumb question, because an answer requires a basic understanding of how drives are setup on the Apple II. (I'm going to ignore the Apple III, because I know nothing about that machine.) The Apple II, II+, and IIe can support two drives per controller. Both of those drives must be 5.25" drives. (I don't know if this limitation exists for third party controllers.) You can, of course, install more than one controller to support more than two drives. The Apple IIc models that support only 5.25" drives can only have one external drive (the second drive in the "chain" is the internal drive). Of course, you cannot install more floppy controllers, so you are limited to two drives. Later Apple IIc models, ones that support 3.5" drives, I have no experience with. The Apple IIgs's internal controller appears to support 4 drives in a chain, but it actually looks like two different controllers in software. The 3.5" drives are in the virtual slot 5, and the 5.25" drives are in the virtual slot 6. Of course you can add more controllers to add more drives, but it gets tricky because many of the slots appear to be used for other hardware (e.g. serial ports). Of course, those other slots can be disabled. The Apple IIc+ is superficially like the Apple IIgs, but you cannot add more controllers so you are limited to 4 drives. | |
Posted by: Dog Cow on 2009-06-30 18:45:18How many Disk drives can be attached to an Apple II?If it has slots, and you fill slots 1 - 7 with Disk ][ controllers, and each controller with two drives, then the total would seem to be 14. The most I typically use is 4, however. 4 5.25" on the //e, or 2 5.25" and 2 3.5" on the GS. | |
| Posted by: luddite on 2009-07-01 16:30:27 A few years ago I attached 7 DuoDisks to a IIe for fun... that's almost 2 megs of online storage! I think I used ProSel as a program launcher. It really worked quite well. | |
Posted by: slomacuser on 2009-07-02 01:13:37 just found this nice photo 🙂 | |
| Posted by: arfink on 2009-07-14 11:59:40 That is quite possibly the coolest and most precarious setup I have ever seen. Just think, if you type a little too hard, or bump your head into the leaning tower of drives while bending down to type, smash there goes your monitor. Still, kinda funny. | |
| Posted by: Dog Cow on 2009-07-14 14:17:50 Is that you, slomacuser? :lol: | |
| Posted by: slomacuser on 2009-07-15 00:35:50 no 🙂 but you can see me in avatar on the right. | |
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