Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!smurf!wrkof!spock From: spock@wrkof.incom.de (Martin Georg) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: AppleFest-Reports from GEnie Summary: AppleFest-Reports from GEnie - Applied Engineering Keywords: GEnie, AppleFest, Report Message-ID: <1990Dec8.091342.20802@wrkof.incom.de> Date: 8 Dec 90 09:13:42 GMT References: <1990Dec8.091115.20670@wrkof.incom.de> Organization: Ing. Buero Winfried Koenig, Offenbach Lines: 65 ------------ Category 35, Topic 11 Message 2 Fri Dec 07, 1990 T.TOBIN at 13:23 PST Applied Engineering News from Applefest '90 A. New Floppy Drives According to Phil Montoya of A.E., one of the two new items they have for us is the AE 3.5" drive and AE High Density Drive. Retail prices are $289 for the AE 3.5" and $339 for the AE HD drive. The upgrade price is $79 to take the AE 3.5 to the new AE HD. The upgrade consists simply of replacing a programmable gate array chip in the AE 3.5 with a new version. After upgrade a sticker which says "HD" is affixed to the front panel. The drive worked well when it was demonstrated to me. The disk loading mechanism seems to work similarly to the MS-DOS 3.5" drives. That is the drive does not grab the disk and pull it in with a 'kerchunk'. You push the disk in until it clicks in. On eject, the unit I viewed literally threw the disk out. This did not happen with each eject, but enough that you should put your hand to the disk port to catch it. Since the drives are not yet shipping, this may be a feature which will be corrected. Shipping is supposed to start by the end of the month; they are shooting for delivery before Christmas. They are taking orders now, however. In order to use the AE HD, a new APPLE3.5 driver is required. This is provided along with the drive, and replaces the APPLE3.5 driver provided with GS/OS. Interestingly, the new driver will also support the Apple brand Apple 3.5 drives, and is supposedly faster, so a mixed drive system should not be a problem. The driver will support ProDOS 8, but will require booting into GS/OS first, so the driver will be available to it. A direct boot into ProDOS 8 will not work with the AE HD drive. If you are using the AE 3.5" drive, then the driver is not required, though it will speed up disk access, according to Mr. Montoya. The bad news is that earlier speculation that the new drives will support other disk formats is in error. The following are the supported formats: ProDOS only 800K 2:1 800K 4:1 400k 4:1 1600K 2:1 1600K 4:1 Macintosh or MS-DOS FSTs are not available and not planned. According to Montoya, this is because of limitations in the IWM disk controller chip in the IIgs, which is unable to read/write to MFM encoding (used in MS-DOS and Mac High Density drives). The AE HD is available only for the Apple IIgs. The 8 bit Apples will not be able to use the new drive. B. Fax Modems The other product Applied Engineering is getting ready to ship is their new product SendFax. This will be an Apple IIgs only product. It will consist of a set of chip upgrades to their existing Datalink Express and Datalink GS. Software will also be provided which will allow access to the fax capabilities. The software will consist of a printer driver which will be selected under the GS applications' Page Setup menu item. They are attempting to have the SendFax ready to ship by 15 Dec 90, but Mr. Montoya was not real definite about that. I did not test out SendFax so I cannot assess its capabilities.