UI.ANDREW@cu20b.arpa (Andrew Dinnerstein) (09/22/85)
With the new 3.5 inch drives Apple announced Tuesday, September 17 for their Apple //e series, an interesting question arises: "Will media between transportable between the //e and the Macintosh." [Background: the //e drives are double-sided double-density and store 800k. The questions below are raised on the assumption that Apple will release double-sided double-density disks for the Mac within the next few months.] Before people start falling down and laughing and screaming about all sorts of reason why it won't work and it's absurd, let me explain that I mean transporting data between the Mac and the //e - raw Ascii files, which most application programs can produce. The first obvious problem is disk operating systems. I don't know, but I bet that Apple //e Prodos and the Macintosh finder DON'T use the same logical, not to mention physical, sectoring method. BUT...the Mac disk drive is software controlled (it speeds up some places, slows down on others to create Mac-whine). Is it possible to write drivers that would control the Mac drive to read disks, no matter how they were written? [Data General and HP 3.5 floppies could also be read.] The key problem would seem to be controlling the hardware - if the data could be read, surely software could make heads or tails of the data. [I'm not saying this is a trivial task, but getting the bytes seems like the hardest part.] Right, if it's so easy, everyone would have done it already. My prime motivation for asking this question is that I'm just thrilled about the additions for the //e, four years too late, but..(Steve just left on Tues :-) ) I think that a Mac-//e bridge would be neat....I'm sure lots of people in the education field (and others) would think it would be neat, too! Schools are one of the //e's really big markets. /andrew -------
velu@umcp-cs.UUCP (Velu Sinha) (09/23/85)
Gee, if memory serves, it seems perfectly reasonable to throw disks about
between Macs and // series hardware. I believe that both the Mac and
the //c use the IWM disk controller, a single chip version of the Woz's
original, ingenious 8-SSIs-or-thereabouts controller. (I also hazily
remember something about the Mac having a 2x transfer rate setting.)
But hey, isn't that why Apple (foolishly?) limited itself hardwarewise?
They say you can do anything in software. And if not, well, the //e's
always got slots...
(still playing with my //e)
Dave Hsu
being parasitic on a friend's account,
<hsu@mit-prep>
--
Velu Sinha
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