"Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

25 Apr 2002

In a message dated 4/25/2002 12:21:52 PM Central Daylight Time, 
dquebbeman(a)acm.org writes:

...
   The floppy
port one was called the Hard Disk 20 (Hard Drive 20?? damn, I 
 always screw that up). You are right on the SCSI one (20SC). And there is 
 a 2nd product that I am aware of Apple made for the floppy port. An 
 external 400k floppy drive. They may have made other external floppies 
 for the Mac that use the floppy port as well (800k maybe, but I don't 
 think they made a 1.44 external)

 There were of course other floppy drives made for floppy ports on the 
 IIgs, but I don't know if that is the same functionality, so I don't know 
 if those could have been used on the Mac.  
 I used to own an external 400k drive, sold it about 10 years ago
 along with the old 400k internal drive they let me keep when I
 had my Fat mac upgraded to a 512Ke.

 Yes, Apple did make an external drive, ISTR is was called UniDrive
 but that was also what they called the single plastic 5.25inch drives
 for the Apple //e, according to Sellam... So I think Apple may have
 goofed and used the name twice. However, these were not Superdrives,
 IIRC, they didn't support 1.44MB, only 800MB.

 When I first saw it, the sounds it made were like a little hard
 drive, or so it seemd at the time.

 Third-parties also made external drives; I have one such beast,
 can't recall the maker, but I think it has both autoeject in
 addition to the quite visible and accessible front-panel eject
 button.

Apple called their drives Unidisks, at least for the // family. There was 
also an apple 3.5 drive, but was only for the mac I think. There was some 
compatibility notes on what drives went with what. 
I once had an external Laser 800k drive that worked with either the Laser128 
or mac. 