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From: UI.ANDREW@cu20b.arpa (Andrew Dinnerstein)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Apple //e <-bridge-> Mac?
Message-ID: <1639@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 22-Sep-85 00:28:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1639
Posted: Sun Sep 22 00:28:17 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 08:05:50 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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With the new 3.5 inch drives Apple announced Tuesday, September 17 for their
Apple //e series, an interesting question arises: "Will media between
transportable between the //e and the Macintosh."  [Background:  the //e drives
are double-sided double-density and store 800k.  The questions below are 
raised on the assumption that Apple will release double-sided double-density
disks for the Mac within the next few months.]

Before people start falling down and laughing and screaming about all sorts
of reason why it won't work and it's absurd, let me explain that I mean
transporting data between the Mac and the //e - raw Ascii files, which most
application programs can produce.

The first obvious problem is disk operating systems.  I don't know, but I
bet that Apple //e Prodos and the Macintosh finder DON'T use the same
logical, not to mention physical, sectoring method.  BUT...the Mac disk drive
is software controlled (it speeds up some places, slows down on others to
create Mac-whine).  Is it possible to write drivers that would control
the Mac drive to read disks, no matter how they were written?  [Data General
and HP 3.5 floppies could also be read.]  The key problem would seem to be
controlling the hardware - if the data could be read, surely software could
make heads or tails of the data.  [I'm not saying this is a trivial task, but
getting the bytes seems like the hardest part.]

Right, if it's so easy, everyone would have done it already.  My prime 
motivation for asking this question is that I'm just thrilled about the
additions for the //e, four years too late, but..(Steve just left on Tues :-) )
I think that a Mac-//e bridge would be neat....I'm sure lots of people
in the education field (and others) would think it would be neat, too!  
Schools are one of the //e's really big markets.

/andrew
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