A couple of factors are relevant here, namely my own experience with the Apple][ series, and that of the guys who advise me on these matters. I've never been a frequent Apple user. That decision was made back in '81 or so, when the ][+ was really taking off and swamping the market and I'd revisited the notion of getting one, as many people I knew used them. In the interim, I'd had routine experience every day since Jan '80 with 8" drives, and found them to be completely reliable. I'd never, ever, seen a disk subsystem failure in any of my hardware, nor had I observed one in anyone else's, up to the point at which I observed the "normal" operation of an Apple system. This exposed me to floppy disk subsystem failures, which I didn't even know existed, escept in theory. Disk subsystem failures didn't even exist in my reality up to that point. That clearly put me off the Apple, when I was told that what I'd seen was pretty much normal operation of an Apple. My recent venture into the Apple world simply reinforced that original shock at dealing with disk subsystem failures for the first time. Since I was dealing with folks who'd been serious authors of Apple-based software I assumed the comments they made on the basis of about 6-7 years' experience with the Apple][ to be reasonably reliable. The comments they made were consistent a couple of weeks back with what had been said about the Apple disk subsystem back in '80-'81, so I bought it. The fact that it lined up perfectly with the experience I'd recently had didn't surprise me one bit. Another interesting thing, by the way, is that not a one of those fellows who used the ][+ all the time, with or without 8" disks, uses any Apple products today. If you think that the consensus among those professional users of the Apple][ back in the day when it was, in fact, the tool many people chose to use, is wrong, then I'd suggest you take it up with them. I've reported on my own limited experience and the experiences of others, anecdotally reflected in a general agreement among those experts, both of which seem to align quite well. used standard sorts of controllers almost all the time. Certainly when I was at my own facility, where I had that 6502 box that used the 8" drives and a couple of CCS setups, not to mention yet another couple of CP/M based systems with 8" drives that were occasionally used. Additionally, my clients used other sorts of hardware based on industry-standard soft-sectored controllers with CP/M, or on Pascal engines, which were popular back then. I just wasn't accustomed to seeing disk system failures. The fact that they occurred was not a major factor in my life. Apple users constantly concerned themselves with backup copies of their vital software and data. I made spares, but didn't lose sleep over it. A few weeks back, I had someone read the 6502 FOCAL source for me so I could distribute it to readers of this list. The source diskette was THE first floppy diskette I evern owned. It had never been rewritten, reformatted, or cleaned up in any way. Now, I've got Apple][ diskettes that date back that far too, but it's well to consider that the original boot diskettes that I used on my homebrew 6502 box running APEX, are the ones that Wayne Wall made for me back in '80. I've never needed new ones. That's certainly not the sort of experience people around here who've been Apple users since '80 or so have talked about. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: <SUPRDAVE(a)aol.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 6:15 AM Subject: Re: Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)

I have to agree with Dick. Simple and clever, yes, but Disk ][ was not all that bullet proof. The mechanism was reliable. I rarely recall failure of the mechanism. But I certainly recall disks being rendered unreadable by leaving a disk in the drive when powering down. Lifetimes of frequently used disks were on order of months, even if the disks were write protected. Later Disk ][ drives didn't seem to have as many problems. I assume there was some modification to the circuitry to prevent stray currents in the heads and to clamp surges on power down. The problems resurfaced in some //c internal drives. I don't recall having any problems with the Apple 5.25 (plastic case, D connector) drives. I don't recall having as many problems with drives on other systems with the exception of a Kaypro that would wipe most any disk over the course of a couple hours. I only had access to the one Kaypro, so I don't know if the problem was widespread. Eric