kpopple@suns.es.com@bambam.UUCP (Ken Poppleton) (09/06/90)
I have seen several requests for a Apple2 disk drives which can read and write to IBM-PC disks. I have been using a disk drive card in my apple 2+ and apple 2e which uses IBM-PC compatable disk drives. This allows the use of 400k 5 1/4" disk drives or 800k 3 1/2" disks (which I am using). The drive is currently supported with drivers for Prodos and there is an IBM-PC kernal for Prodos to allow reading and writing of IBM-PC disks. I have not tried the IBM-PC kernal yet. The interface card costs about $70 and can support up to 4 drives but I do not think Prodos will supoport more than 2 drives per slot. The conotroler uses IBM-PC compatable disk drives which cost <$100 each. They are silent in operation. For more information contact Conversion Technology C/O Patrick L. McLaughlin 516 12 th Ave Salt Lake City Utah, 84103 801/364-4171 Ps. The drives could also read and write Kapro CP/M disks if a driver is written. I may attempt to do so if I have the time. Also I may attempt to write drivers for DOS 3.3 and Apple CP/M if I find the time. The manual is very informative and provides information to allow the use of the drives at both the Prodos block IO level and the Disk Track- sector levels. Also avaible from Conversion Technology is the public domain operating system for the Apple2's APEX. Apex supports many different configurations of apples and utilizes plug in device handlers for expansion. It includes an assembler and higher level language XPL.