Anonymous
User login
Please support the defense of Ukraine.
Direct or via Unclutter App
Active forum topics
Recent content
Navigation
No Ads.
No Trackers.
No Social Media.
All Content Locally Hosted.
Built on Free Software.
We have complied with zero government requests for information.
It's a "smart" disk drive port.
It can detect the type of drive connected to it including in some instances, hard drives.
All smartports have 19 pin (DB-19) D-sub connectors.
The Apple IIc had a smartport that could use either a 5.25" disk drive, or a Unidisk 3.5" drive or an Apple HD-20 type hard disk drive (or equivalent emulator)
The IIc Plus could also use an Apple 3.5" drive (which is logically different from the Unidisk 3.5 drive).
The IIGS's smartport could also handle Apple 3.5" drives along with all the others mentioned here.
There are "smartport" adapters, the most notorious being the "LIRON" card for the IIe that could allow you to connect a Unidisk 3.5" drive but nothing else as far as I know.
Modern implementations are the Yellowstone card from Big Mess O' Wires that can connect almost any type of disk drive out there including HD-20 type hard drives (and emulators).
There is something called "SoftSP" which is a ROM image that will allow slotted Apples (II+ and IIe) to get rudimentary smartport capability from a regular Disk II card, but will also require some cable modifications in certain instances.
Perhaps not a real one, but the Floppy Emu works just fine in HD-20 mode on multiple Apple IIs.
Interesting. That suggests that it might be possible to make the HD-20 work with the II's after all. We just need someone who knows how it works, and how a smartport works.
Hello. I'm sorry for the late reply, but I've recently become interested in this topic and felt that I had something to add here. So, according to the Floppy emu website, the hardware emulates the HD20 disk, but only Macs can use it. For the Apple II, something else is emulated, a "Smartport hard drive" that I believe is accessed in a substantially different way than the HD20. Also, IMHO, of course, this "Smartport hard drive" is not a real thing, and only exists under emulation. Floppy emu implements it, and I think Applewin implements it too. As far as I'm aware, Apple never released a "Smartport hard drive", or to formulate it differently, a hard drive accessible via the Smartport interface (because it would be too slow?), and neither did any third parties during the Apple II lifetime. The bottom line is, don't hold your breath hoping to connect a HD20 to an Apple II. It will probably not happen, unfortunately.
No, there were HDDs that used the SmartPort: the Chinook CT-20C or CT-40C, and the ProApp 10 or 20. Maybe others too.
They were not very common, and are rare today, but they did exist. Another HDD, the QC10 or QC20 from Quark, used a proprietary protocol over the Disk II port.
The Apple HD20 uses the Mac floppy port with a similar signalling scheme, but the difference is that the IWM in the Mac uses a higher bitrate (500 kb/s) than the Disk II or SmartPort (218.75 kb/s). Peripherals that advertise compatibility with both SmartPort and Mac need to work with both data rates.
I don't have extensive knowledge on this subject, but these numbers seem a little suspicious to me. Yes, the Disk II that uses 5.25 inch diskettes uses a 218-219 kb/s bitrate, and it can be calculated easily. But Wikipedia (the Disk II article) says "The much larger capacity and higher bitrate of the 3+1⁄2-inch drives made it impractical to use the software-driven Disk II controller". So, Apple II-compatible 3.5 inch drives have a higher bitrate that the 5.25 inch ones. Another quote from Wikipedia (the Macintosh External Disk Drive article): "It [the Unidisk 3.5 inch] would later also work directly with the built-in disk port on the Apple IIc Plus and Apple IIGS through backwards compatibility. This was not recommended for the latter two machines as the Apple 3.5" Drive was faster." How is one drive faster than another if their bitrates are the same? The number for the Macs also seem weird, IMHO. 500 kb/s is the bitrate of the 1.44MB Superdrive, which is a late addition and uses the SWIM chip rather than the IWM, IMHO. The Mac 400KB/800KB drive should work with much lower bitrates IMHO. To reach 500 kb/s bitrate, the drive's angular velocity should be 450/675 rpm instead of the standard 300 rpm, which would be too straining for the drive mechanics.