13 May
1998
13 May
'98
2:06 p.m.
Doug Spence wrote:
Greetings,
Last week, along with a boxload of other stuff, I picked up an external
3.5" floppy drive that apears to be intended for Apple machines.
It's a DS800 from DataSpace Corporation.
It physically plugs into my Apple //c, but I can't get the machine to
recognize it. The drive makes a noise when I power up the computer, but
that's all. Attempts to access S6, D2 or any other slot and drive
combination doesn't get anywhere.
Not surprising... the only 3.5" drive that will work with a //c is the
Unidisk (assuming you have a //c which will even work with one of
those).
It DOES respond to my Mac 512K, though. I plugged it
into that machine
and shoved a Mac-formatted disk in it, and an icon and open window popped
up.
I don't think the drive can be intended for the Mac, though, because it's
got a MECHANICAL eject mechanism. In fact I was able to eject that Mac
disk (write protected, thankfully ;) ) and the Mac didn't notice.
Is there something I need to do to get my //c to recognize the drive? Or
is it intended for use on a //gs? Or did this company make a line of
dangerous Mac peripherals in an attempt to give the platform a bad name
for an overabundance of disk corruptions? ;)
//gs, definately.
Specifically, this drive appears to be a clone of the Apple 3.5" Drive
(yes,
that's its name). The Apple drive could work on either the //gs or the
Mac
Plus, so this one is probably set up similarly.
FYI, it will probably also work nicely on a Laser 128 or with the Laser
Universal Disk Controller (UDC) card for the Apple //.
<<<John>>>