mikec@tekred.UUCP (10/20/86)
I recently purchased a 3.5" disk drive from Central Point Software. For my //e, I also had to buy a controller card. The purchase includes Copy ][+. Total price, with shipping was $300. The drive works great on the //e. I can also use my 5 1/4" drive on the same controller card. The drive will plug directly into my Macintosh. It will not plug into the //c, nor can you daisy chain it with other Apple 3.5" drives. Central Point tells me the drive should work with the //gs. Since Apple's new 3.5 drives plug into the //gs or Macintosh, I'm betting that you don't even need the controller card to plug this drive into the //gs. Price of the drive & software w/o the controller is $195. I've used it with ProDOS, and Pascal. It won't boot as a Pascal drive. (It works fine, otherwise. Another reason to switch to Kyan Pascal.) Since it conforms to Apple's standards for drives, the DOS 3.3 utilities for the Unidisk 3.5 should work with this. I haven't tried CP/M yet; I'll post when I do. You could also get a Sider 10mb hard disk, now priced at $499. This would work on a //e or //gs. I really think you need a hard disk w/ the //gs. It takes a long time to load those digitized sound sequences. The Sider runs about twice as fast as a 3.5" disk, and 1/2 the speed of a RAM disk under ProDOS. 3.5" drives run about the same speed as 5.25" drives. Oh yeah...disclaimers: Read the organization line; I don't work for Central Point, the folks who make the Sider, Kyan Software, or Apple. And I don't own a Sider 10mb yet. ..mac