"Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

From: Douglas H. Quebbeman <dquebbeman_at_acm.org>
Date: Thu Apr 25 12:02:21 2002

> The floppy port one was called the Hard Disk 20 (Hard Drive 20?? damn, I
> always screw that up). You are right on the SCSI one (20SC). And there is
> a 2nd product that I am aware of Apple made for the floppy port. An
> external 400k floppy drive. They may have made other external floppies
> for the Mac that use the floppy port as well (800k maybe, but I don't
> think they made a 1.44 external)
>
> There were of course other floppy drives made for floppy ports on the
> IIgs, but I don't know if that is the same functionality, so I don't know
> if those could have been used on the Mac.

I used to own an external 400k drive, sold it about 10 years ago
along with the old 400k internal drive they let me keep when I
had my Fat mac upgraded to a 512Ke.

Yes, Apple did make an external drive, ISTR is was called UniDrive
but that was also what they called the single plastic 5.25inch drives
for the Apple //e, according to Sellam... So I think Apple may have
goofed and used the name twice. However, these were not Superdrives,
IIRC, they didn't support 1.44MB, only 800MB.

When I first saw it, the sounds it made were like a little hard
drive, or so it seemd at the time.

Third-parties also made external drives; I have one such beast,
can't recall the maker, but I think it has both autoeject in
addition to the quite visible and accessible front-panel eject
button.

-dq
Received on Thu Apr 25 2002 - 12:02:21 BST