Vladimir Ivanov has posted on newsgroup comp.sys.apple2, information on his latest project; an Apple II interface for PC-style 3.5 MFM floppy drives. Videos of the interface in action are online, and a production run for the interface has been announced. Vladitx’s full announcement is quoted below.
Greetings,
Friends of mine convinced me on a pet project – connecting PC floppy disk drive to the Apple ][. First working prototype used DD (Double Density) mode:
http://softjunk.org/vid/appleII_with_PC_floppy_first_success.mp4
We were not happy with the handling of the DD diskettes in modern HD floppy drives, not to mention that this kind of media is almost extinct. Notching a HD diskette into a DD-alike is not a good idea, too, because of different coercivity. Thus came version 2 utilizing the diskette in HD (High Density) mode but still deluding the Apple ][ that it’s a Disk ][:
http://softjunk.org/vid/appleII_with_PC_HD_floppy.mp4
In the good old days a programmer named Boby Zahariev made disk operating system for Oric Atmos (Pravetz-8D) similar to Apple’s DOS 3.3, using the same drives, disk controller and disk layout. It works with our toy as well:
http://softjunk.org/vid/oric_atmos_pravetz_8d_with_PC_HD_floppy.mp4
We’re probably going to do a production PCB, so if anyone is feeling interested and says so, we could adjust our board allocation numbers.
One feature I put is converting Apple’s half-tracks to real tracks, so the PC diskette can hold up-to 80 tracks. Anyone to know a quick patch of DOS / ProDOS to use them? It will result in 280KB (70 tracks) or 320KB (80 tracks) capacity if there isn’t any internal OS limitation.
Happy Holidays!
— Vlad