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Re: Reading 720k requires lots of effort



>At work, we have many "leftover" apple parts.
>
>One of them is something called "Unidisk 3.5"
>Its apple's external 3.5 inch 720k drive, but im not sure if its for an 
>Apple2e or early macs. (Model no. A2M2053).

It's actually an 800K drive (on a Mac, anyway).

>It has a 19 pin cable on it, and also a 19pin socket on its back, no power 
>outlet, but the drive ejects electrically and has the "paperclip hole".

My old copy of "The Macintosh Bible" says that the Unidisk was intended
for the Apple II, but can be used as an external Mac 800K drive by
bypassing the internal disk controller (if you want to know the details,
mail me privately).

>If someone could hack these into parallel or serial drives, maybe a PC 
>could be used to transfer the contents of low-density disks.

In theory, yes; in practice I doubt it. You'd need software support in 
Executor to make it work (unless - maybe - you managed to hook it up to a 
standard PC floppy controller - and I have my doubts since I believe that 
the special 800K was more a function of the Apple floppy controller than 
the drive) and I can't see that it's worth ARDI's while to do that as 
things stand. If anyone knows different of course, please feel free to 
correct me.

>All of this to read a 720k disk is hardly worth the effort, but it poses 
>a great challenge.

I agree entirely.