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5.25 Floppy Drive for Mac SE

Mister_Alex

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 1, 2011
Messages
58
I am looking at used external 5.25 Inch Floppy drives for my Mac SE. Will any one, say, one from an Apple 2, work? I hope someone can help. :(
 
I tried this with a Classic once, using the 5.25" drive that came with an Apple IIgs. IIRC, it recognizes the drive, but keeps bugging you to initialize the disk if there isn't one inserted. I can't remember if it was able to make a usable HFS volume with one or not.

What's the goal here, out of curiousity? If you're looking to transfer stuff from a Mac to an Apple II, you might be better served by finding an 800KB disk drive for the Apple II instead.
 
No 5.25 Floppy drives are supported on the Mac SE.. The only 5.25 drive for the Mac was the Macintosh PC Drive.. Which worked on the SE/30 and Macintosh II series with the appropriate card. The Macintosh PC drive was used for reading 360kb Disks.. If I remember right you can damage the SE's floppy controller by connecting a 3.5 unidisk, a 5.25 unidisk and any 5.25 Drives for the Apple II Series..

The only external floppy drive supported on the macintosh SE is the Macintosh 400k External, The Macintosh 800k External, The Apple 3.5 drive and the external FDHD drive which is rarer then well gold.
 
The only external floppy drive supported on the macintosh SE is the Macintosh 400k External, The Macintosh 800k External, The Apple 3.5 drive and the external FDHD drive which is rarer then well gold.
Those are 3.5 drives, he wants 5.25 drives that work with the SE. It would be easier, though, to use the 3.5 drives.
 
5.25 drives do not work on an SE.. I posted what drives were supported. If you connect any 5.25 drive to an SE you could damage the IWM controller.. AKA the floppy drive controller. The connectors may be the same, but they will not work and you would have a Mac SE that wouldnt read floppy disks anymore. To read ProDOS Disks in a Mac, you need a Mac with Sytem 7.0.1 with the ProDOS file System extension. Then you can read all the 3.5 disks you want.. Really the best bet if your working with Apple II's is get a PC with a serial port and use ADTpro.. Easiest way to get disk images to the Apple II.

I would suggest not connecting the 5.25 drive to the SE, would hate to see ya let the smoke out of it.. Ive seen others do this and its killed the IWM, thus rendering the disk drives inoperable- requiring a logic board replacement.

The Supported external FDD Drives on the Mac SE

Macintosh 400k Drive used on the 128k/512k
Macintosh 800k Drive Used on the plus
Apple 3.5 Drive 800k
Apple 3.5 Drive FDHD- As long as the system roms are upgraded

The SE/30 Can use the super Rare Macintosh PC 5.25 Floppy Drive with the PDS Controller Board. The Macintosh II can use this drive with the Nubus Card as well

Any Macintosh with an LC PDS Slot and the Apple IIe card can connect an Apple 5.25 drive to the cable from the Apple IIe Card
 
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There was also the LC Apple IIe PDS card, which COULD accept any Apple II (5.25 or 3.5) floppy, but this wouldn't work on a SE, it needs a LC style PDS slot, so the color classic would be the only compact mac that could use it, however I think the drive was only usable by the Apple II emulation, I don't think you could read/write the disks from the Mac finder, only from the Apple II side.

The II Emulation card was fairly common (especially when compared to the Mac PC Compatible drive).

NOTE: the IIe card would NOT help the OP here, as far as I know there is NO way to connect any kind of 5.25 drive to an SE (however there could have been some kind of 3rd party options I am not aware of).

EDIT: I see AppleIIfan beat me to mentioning the IIe card, props!
 
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Ive got the Macintosh PC compatible drive controller card- but no darn drive to use with it :p, it just sits in the Mac II with software installed waiting for its turn

Ive also got the IIe Card & cable and a PDS DOS Card.. The IIe card is an interesting animal. I had it in my sons LC for a while good the IIe software runs good on it
 
Ive got the Macintosh PC compatible drive controller card- but no darn drive to use with it :p, it just sits in the Mac II with software installed waiting for its turn

Ive also got the IIe Card & cable and a PDS DOS Card.. The IIe card is an interesting animal. I had it in my sons LC for a while good the IIe software runs good on it
I sold my last IIe PDS card a few years back (I had sold my last LC mac years prior to that) they were fairly common cards back in the day, but I know the cables were commonly lost to time, out of the 3 IIe cards I owned I only ever had one cable. They were great cards, ran Apple II software very well on a Mac, since it wasn't really "emulation" to speak of, they had the MegaII chip on the card, which is the same chip the IIgs used to retain full compatibility with II series software (The MegaII is basically a IIe on a single chip, minus CPU and RAM).
 
What I am looking to do is play some Apple 2 games on the Mac SE. I'm confused; some people say sure, a 5.25 drive will work, others say it won't.
 
I'd say play it safe and stay away from trying it; it didn't do my Classic any harm, but if AppleIIFan's right and it could harm the disk controller in an SE, you don't want to take the risk. There might be an Apple II card with its own disk connector for the SE's PDS slot, but I don't know for sure.
 
The Mac SE will not play Apple II games, they are 2 entirely different kinds of systems. I would suggest an emulator like Sweet16 for windows and NO a 5.25 drive will not work.. You will damage your SE if you try to connect a 5.25 drive to it. I live and breath Apple.. Ive seen people ruin systems attempting to do what you are doing.

You are SOL
 
The Mac SE will not play Apple II games, they are 2 entirely different kinds of systems. I would suggest an emulator like Sweet16 for windows and NO a 5.25 drive will not work.. You will damage your SE if you try to connect a 5.25 drive to it. I live and breath Apple.. Ive seen people ruin systems attempting to do what you are doing.

You are SOL
You aren't guaranteed to ruin it, but its pretty likely, many people have ruined the IWM on their Macs trying to connect 5.25 drives, but I tried once (when I was like 14, and stupid) and I got lucky and DIDN'T fry my IWM, but I would NEVER take that chance again now that I know better.

If you need to get data to/from an Apple II onto a PC or Mac, ADT is the best, and easiest way to go. It will let you make images of disks that you can then use in ANY Apple II Emulator.

Another good option is to get a 3.5" drive on your Apple II, then with a System 7.5-9 Mac (with internal floppy drive) you can read/write those disks all day long. (This option will NOT work with Modern OSX Macs, nor PCs as their floppy drives do not understand the GCR encoding on 800k floppy's, they only understand MFM encoded floppy's)

Another option if you have the money for a SCSI card for the Apple II, is a SCSI removable drive like a Zip or Jaz drive, it works well for transferring back and forth between an A2 and a Mac (and even a PC with special software, like Ciderpress (DL mirror) would probably read it).
 
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