🚀 go-pugleaf

a72@mindlink.UUCP (Raman Anand) writes:

>Is there a PD or Commercial software for reading/writing 720K MSDOS disks
>on a MAC+ 800K drive?

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO 
You need HARDWARE.  See the article in the current MacUser.  It gives all
the information and some test results.

Below you find a summary of responses when I asked the same question a few
months ago.  For the Mac Plus owner only options 1,2,5,6,8 and 9 work.  MacUser
recommended Kennect and the superdrive.

**************************************************************************
*  If you don't have a hard disk or need an extra removable one, and if  *
*  you have patience and guts, you might want to wait for the FLOPTICAL  *
*  drive.  It stores more than 20MB on special floppies, accesses them   *
*  like a slow hard disk AND reads and writes 720KB and 1.44MB MS-DOS    *
*  format.  As far as I know not available right now in retail.  See     *
*  recent articles in this news group.                                   *
**************************************************************************

There are several drive solutions for the Mac:

1.  Ordinary external Apple drive, connected via the Rapport
(cable+electronics) from Kennect Technologies.  Rapport costs about $220.
(if you connect Rapport to the drive port of your Mac, the *internal* drive is
pestered to *read* MS-DOS floppies, but it can not write this format)

2.  Kennect 2.4 Drive together with Rapport (see above) lets you read/write
normal and HD MS-DOS floppies, HD Mac and 2.4Mb format exclusive to this
drive.  Costs about $550 (together).

3.  Apple 5 1/4" external drive.  Needs an extra card, so not possible in
the Plus.  Gives only 360K MS-DOS format.

4.  New Apple 3 1/4" external drive.  Works like the superdrive, so you can
read and write 800K Mac, 720K DOS and 1.44M DOS formats.  I am not sure
whether you can *format* all these types.  Some people say the hardware is not
that good.  Expensive.  Does not work with a Plus.

5.  The PLI TurboFloppy is a SCSI device that can be added to any Mac with
a SCSI port, and it is very similar in function to a SuperDrive (though
it is not quite the same).  It can only read/write 1.44Mb MS-DOS format.
Costs about $350.

6.  DaynaFile makes drives that read IBM disks, and from what I hear the
interface is better than using a SuperDrive.  The disks come up in the
finder just like a mac disk.  Old and expensive.

I know of one solution for the **PC**.

7.  Put a half card into the PC and connect an ordinary external Apple
drive.  Your PC can then read and write 800K Mac format.  See an ad in a
recent issue of Byte.  A cheap solution.

Other solutions are:

8.  A modem, a network,  and
typing :-).  

9.  A 0-modem (RS232 cable between Mac and PC) or other direct connection
(MacLink?).  Don't discard this possiblity if you don't have a PC around.  I
guess you can get old IBM's (you know, the ones with the ssllllowww screen)
or other machines real cheap and if the drive is in good condition, that's
all you need.  Might be cheaper than all these high-tech solutions above.

With thanks to 
Darik Datta, keith@ux.acss.umn.edu, att.att.com!cbnewsc!fjo, Ingemar Ragnemalm,
Mark H. Anbinder, Matthew T. Russotto, Paul Eric Menchen, Frank WGM de Bruyn,
Marc Heijligers, Grobbins.

						Kees

-- 
Kees Huizing - Eindhoven Univ of Techn - Dept Math & Comp Sc - The Netherlands
DOMAIN: wsinkees@win.tue.nl    BITNET: wsdckeesh@heitue5    FAX: +31-40-436685