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| Using a internal 3.5 mac superdrive on apple IIgs |
Posted by: soviet on 2015-12-23 13:29:59
Hi i like to know if possible to connect an internal macintosh 3.5 superdrive to the apple IIgs.
Also if this is possible if somebody have a guide or pinouts to do this.
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Posted by: waynestewart on 2015-12-23 14:52:43
A bare drive won’t work, if you’re connecting to the IIgs via the disk port then a 3.5” drive needs a case with a daisy-chain port. You can just replace the 800k mechanism in the case with the 1.4mb mechanism. However the IIgs will still only see it as a 800k drive. To use it as a 1.4mb drive you need the Apple II Superdrive card.
The only way you can connect a bare drive is via a Universal Disc Controller. Even then it’ll only see the drive as an 800k drive.
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Posted by: olePigeon on 2015-12-29 22:39:00
Central Point Software also made a Super Drive controller card.
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Posted by: waynestewart on 2015-12-30 07:14:56
CPS never produced their own hardware but they did bundle their software with the Vtech UDC card and sold that. It would only handle 3.5” disks up to 800k though.
A while back Reactive Micro produced a Superdrive card but I believe it used the drive controller chip from older Macs so production was limited to a few cards and it’d no longer being made.
There were the Blue Disk and Urpi controllers but they used PC floppy drives
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Posted by: techknight on 2015-12-30 14:03:22
i would say superdrive cards will be impossible to find...
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Posted by: Cory5412 on 2015-12-30 19:35:09
Impossible may be an overstatement. I have seen one or two in person (it perhaps helps that I was at KansasFest) but they were priced like premium or rare APple II upgrades -- the superdrive kit with a card and one drive was $450 or so.
I considered picking one up, but instead for about $80, was able to pick up a card that lets me use a CF card as a hard disk in my IIgs. (*I am terrible and have forgotten the name.)
1.4-meg floppy storage is definitely uncommon and is probably not something that the everyday Apple II user bothers doing.
There's also the FloppyEmu, which won't work on the older APple IIs as far as I know, but which adds SmartPort emulation so you can use it for Apple IIgs flopy and hard disk emulation.
Tools like the UNISDISK and the floppyemu are some of the neater things going on in the Apple II scene at the moment. I have like five or six 3.5-inch floppies that I use sometimes, but by and large, my IIgs gets software through its serial port, using localtalk.
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Posted by: olePigeon on 2016-01-04 10:52:07
CPS never produced their own hardware but they did bundle their software with the Vtech UDC card and sold that. It would only handle 3.5” disks up to 800k though. You're probably right... but I coulda sworn. I'll need to look at my box again. 😛
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Posted by: waynestewart on 2016-01-04 12:07:33
I’m not a collector more of a leftover. Two of my superdrive cards I bought at a store. One for me, one for my girl friend. Later on when a number of people had moved on some dropped off their Apple II hardware at our User Group meeting or since I was Apple II VP phoned me and asked if I wanted it. There were a few superdrive and Liron cards there.
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