jbowe@bbn.com (John Bowe) (02/21/90)
Is it possible to install a 1.44 Meg floppy in a Mac Plus in place of the 800K drive? I asked a couple people, and of course some said "yes" and some "no". If yes, is it just a hardware swap, or is there more to it? (I'll summarize if I get more than a couple email replies.) -john- <jbowe@bbn.com>
prg@bonnie.ATT.COM (Paul R. Gloudemans) (02/22/90)
In article <13526@slate.BBN.COM>, jbowe@bbn.com (John Bowe) writes: > Is it possible to install a 1.44 Meg floppy in a Mac Plus in place of > the 800K drive? I asked a couple people, and of course some said "yes" I believe the upgrade for a MacII requires a ROM swap as well so I doubt you'll have much success with a Plus.
jbowe@bbn.com (John Bowe) (02/27/90)
Last week I posted a note asking for advice on putting a 1.44 Meg (FDHD) floppy drive on my Mac Plus. The answer is "not very easily", much as I had expected. Here are the replies I got: [ Thanks for the replies, guys! -john- ] __________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 18:41:57 PST From: Noah Price <noah@apple.com> No. The 1.44 Meg floppy (FDHD, or SuperDrive) requires the "SWIM" (Super Woz Integrated Machine) floppy disk controller found in the Mac IIx, Mac IIcx, Mac IIci, SE/30 and new SE. noah __________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 11:18:47 EST From: Michael Bergman <bergman@m2c.org> Kennect technologies makes a box to do this. (They make a drive as well) As I understand it, the problem is that the drive controller on the Mac doesn't understand the higher density floppies. If you add Kennect's drive controller (it plugs into the floppy port) it will take over control of your internal drive whenever a high density floppy is inserted, allowing you to *read* high density floppies, I believe in either mac or ibm format, at the cost of a slight delay (the time it takes the internal controller to decide that it doesn't recognize the disk and generate an error code, which is what tells the Kennect box to take over). You will not be able to use the low density drive to write, however. To do that, you need either a external apple or third party drive, or an external kennect drive. I suspect that you could install an apple HD drive internally, and have the Kennect controller plugged in and it would work, but did not discuss this particular configuration with Kennect, so I can't say for sure. If you used a HD external drive AND the Kennect controller, you would have one extra -- the ability to read and write 2.4 Meg (or thereabouts) floppies, using the standard HD diskettes, and to read and write 1.2 Meg onto standard DD diskettes. Apparently IBM has a more compact coding scheme for data, and apple uses the more efficient variable speed drives -- Kennect's controller can use either of these formats, OR BOTH AT ONCE. The latter results in the super high density, without exceeding the specs for the diskette. Presumably you can do this with any HD drive, not just Kennect's, if you have the Kennect controller. I got this information from an engineer at Kennect's booth at MacWorld Boston. The one thing the Kennect drive and controller CANNOT do is act as a boot floppy. Annoying, eh? Apparently this was plain and simply an engineering error, one which was discovered too late to correct, and is not going to be corrected (as of last August -- who knows what they're up to now--call them if you think they do) Hope this is of help. __________________________________________________________________ From: Erik Adams <adams.e@oxy.edu> Date: 21 Feb 90 09:05:39 PST Apple offers no upgrade (I think), which says to me "no, you can't just swap disk drives". There are, however, several third party devices that give a plus or an SE a 1.44 floppy. Some run off the SCSI, but one I know of runs off the normal drive port, and adds some functions to the internal drive. Sorry I don't know any of the names, I don't have a copy of MacUser handy. Erik __________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 14:42:46 -0800 From: "Raymond C. Fischer" <rcfische@polyslo.calpoly.edu> No, and yes. The 1.4M floppy drives require a SWIM chip to drive them at the higher data rate. No Mac+ has this chip, and so you cannot just swap drives. However, some company (Kennect?) sells a doohicky that does let you connect an external 1.4M drive. __________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 10:08:22 EST From: Geoff Crooks <gbc@med.unc.edu> Hi john. I think (operative clause here) the answer is no. You can't even put the 1.44 Meg floppy into an old 800K SE without upgrading (ROM?) I know cuz I tried it. If you get a definitive techie answer, though, I'd appreciate it if you'd pass it along.. maybe even post to the net. Geoff.