I just got a Platinum IIe. I put my 5 1/4 I/O card in the IIe and both drives seem fine. I put my 3.5 Drive controller card (603-9107-A LIRON) in and attached my 3.5 drives (A9M0106) drives, first both daisy chained, then individually. At no time were any of the 3.5 drives accessed. I have the 3.5 card in slot 5 and the 5 1/4 card in slot 6.
Yesterday or the day before, the 4 drives were daisy chained to a IIgs and worked.
Does anyone have any pointers in troubleshooting this?
Thanks.
I believe the A9M0106 drives you have are regular 3.5 drives designed for the Apple IIgs. A Liron card requires the use of a Unidisk 3.5 drive.
I suggest not plugging it in again, as the card can damage easily.
Thanks.
I guess I'll have to check the drives in my GS the next day or two.
Any idea where I can get a card so I can use my 3.5 drives in my IIe?
A Vtech Universal Disk Controller card (UDC) would allow the style drives you have to work with an Apple IIe. They come up on ebay every now and then.
Maybe I should be looking for a UniDisk, too?
Either, but both of these usually come at a premium price unfortunately
Jay
For the record, this excellent article explains which drives to use with which Apple II.
Thanks. I saved that with my other references.
I just bought a VTECH UDC card. I also found a readable manual online. It doesn't say if I can use both the UDC and an Apple I/O Card (for 5 1/4 drives). The manual says that although the UDC card is designed to handle 4 drive chains, it isn't recommended due to signal degradation and electrical noise.
I'd like to plug two 3 1/2 drives in the UDC (either daisy chained or one into J1 and the other into J2) and two 5 1/2 drives in the Apple card.
Is this possible? Could I boot from the 5 1/2 and still have access to the 3 1/2, and the reverse?
You can have both 5.25” and 3.5” drives connected to the Vtech UDC card at the same time. I had one hooked up that way briefly but I never cared for that setup as it’s less convenient for booting programs from the second drive. I preferred having a 5.25” controller in slot 6 and the UDC with 3.5” drives in slot 5.
That is exactly how I was thinking of doing it.
Same here.
It's for the best to run it in slot 5 with a 5.25 card in slot 6, as a lot of the UDC cards seem to develop issues with running 5.25 drives.
Here is more information:
http://www.applefritter.com/content/apple-udc-problem-universal-disk-controller
Thanks.