apple II scsi or ide?

[harshbarj]

I own 4 apple II compatible systems and would love a hdd in all 4 (really want another IIgs, just love those things). I could test in a IIgs woz, apple IIE platinum, and a Franklin ACE 1200. I have limited programming knowledge outside of basic and some c++. I have many spare hard drives all over (both desktop and laptop). I am not sure about these things that use a cf card, just seems like asking for trouble.

As for capacity, I use to have a IIgs with a scsi card and used an external 40mb drive and never filled it. So almost any drive will work (for me that is). Sadly I put that system in storage and have yet to find it. It was fully decked out with 8mb of ram and that fast scsi card. Quite upsetting.

 

[Cloudscout]

I'd be interested in a few of them myself.

I have a IIgs, a IIe and a Laser 128 that I'd love to have mass storage for.

I actually just picked up an XT-IDE PCB from Andrew this week and will be putting that to use soon. These types of cooperative homebrew hardware projects are fascinating. The things I learned just reading the last 50 pages of the XT-IDE developer thread nearly blew my mind.

 

[glitch]

it would be difficult to boot the system from HD without ROM, so I would think it shoud definitely be required. The real concern is the timing problem using simple TTL parts, due to the slower Apple bus. Frankly with WD being the sole manufacturer still producing ATA drives, I am skeptical of the viablility of the project in the long run.

You could also use a CF card in an IDE adapter, or my personal favorite, an industrial flash module! Both have the added benefit of being able to draw +5 from IDE pin 20, so there are no cables required, and you don't have to tap power off the power supply cables or slots into a Molex termination.

I'd certainly be willing to help with devleopment of the hardware/software if people are interested in this project -- I've got a IIe and IIgs up-and-running at home. I'd also be interested, if anything comes of it, in getting CP/M 2.2 working with the Z80 card with the project available as a hard drive. That would make the Apple II series a very powerful entry-level CP/M machine!

 

[RetroHacker_]

Doing an Apple II IDE would be a fun project, and it shouldn't be too terribly hard, since there already are several projects just like that - for example, here : http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm

Only problem is that it's not really complete - without a ROM resident ProDOS block device driver, it's not a drop-in solution. In the II series, each card has a section of ROM that's scanned at powerup, which can contain the boot code and ProDOS driver. This is how a card like the Apple II SCSI or the Profile interface works. The Profile interface is actually a *very* simple board, all descrete logic and a ROM. I have no doubt in my mind that such a thing could be done for IDE.

-Ian