Hal Vaughan wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 April 2008, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 04/16/08 21:15, PETER EASTHOPE wrote:
>>> Folk,
>>>
>>> I have a copy of ProDOS-System.zip which unzips
>>> to "Apple II System Disk 3.2.dc".
>>>
>>> Can a Debian make a ProDOS boot diskette?
>>> Should dd work?
>> dd should be able to do it, if the hardware is capable. But I doubt
>> it, since "PC-style" floppy drives are soft-sector, and IIRC the
>> Apple drives were hard-sector.
>
> I think Apple drives were soft sector,
Apple drives were indeed soft sector, originally, they had 13 sectors,
then they did a firmware update that increased them to 16 sector. (The
"firmware update" involved physically pulling and replacing a socketed
IC on one of the circuit boards inside the drive.)
There were hardware differences with the "Woz Mazchine" floppy design
and the IBM compatible design. An IBM 5 1/4 inch drive could be made to
read and write Apple disks with the aid of some extra hardware, it
involved using a (8-bit) card on the ISA bus and the use of a special
Y-cable that connected between that card, the floppy controller card,
and the floppy drive.
The same setup could also be used to defeat any floppy-based
copy-protection scheme. I owned one of these (still have it in a closet
somewhere) and used it to back up games. The Apple disk reading
capability came in handy, once.
Mark Allums
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