Rubywand wrote in message news:<408218D6.C02C376@swbell.net>... > About your process for reading non-PC diskettes: Could it work for Apple > II diskettes with one drive if a Read started with a PC diskette in the drive? > As soon as the Disk Controller detects and starts reading the PC diskette, > could you prompt to swap in an Apple II diskette and continue? > No, that would be too easy ;-) Unfortunately, when the controller is fired reading a sector, it can't be stopped. If it's not serviced in time, it will return an error (with a "not serviced in time" flag set) and will finish the read command. Anyway, if you've got a PC 5.25" drive, I suppose it's not a big issue to also have a 3.5" drive in the same computer, but I agree it would have been cooler to be able to use just one drive. Lastly, in fact, it's partially possible to read a track (even an Apple 2 track) with a single drive. Read the 1DISKDRV.TXT file in the DOCS\TECH subdirectory of the archive which explains (for the Amiga, but Apple 2 is the same in this case) how little room on a track is necessary to be able to read the rest back. Again, unfortunately, the Apple 2 drive (as well as most drives of the time, except on IBM machines) doesn't take the index signal into account (well, there may even not be an index signal at all with the disk II, but I don't know it enough to be sure), so the "formatting technique" explained cannot work reliably without killing one or two sectors randomly before getting a chance to read them... If you wanna have only 1 disk drive in the computer, the best way to go is with the Disk2FDI cable ;-) The dumping speed to the DO format is also very fast with it. Vincent Joguin. Oliver asked: >>Anyway, if you've got a PC 5.25" drive, I suppose it's not a big issue >>to also have a 3.5" drive in the same computer, but I agree it would >>have been cooler to be able to use just one drive. > >sorry if these questions are totally stupid, but... > >The program you are talking about is a MS-DOS executable - isn't it? >Where is the problem with writing the data read from the 5.25" drive >to the hard disk (presuming it's FAT)? > >And regarding the floppy swapping issue: MS-DOS executables typically >have much more RAM available than an Apple2 floppy contains data. Why >can't be the Apple2 floppy read in completely - with whatever magic is >necessary - and afterwards the floppy drive reset to normal operation >and the data written out? The second (3.5" or 5.25") drive is not used for data storage, but only to allow the floppy disk controller to start reading something it can recognize before switching to the 5.25" drive containing the Apple disk in mid-read. Data and programs for the PC reside on the hard disk, as usual. The second floppy is a hack to make reading an arbitrary disk possible. -michael Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/