Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!mordor!sri-spam!ames!aurora!labrea!decwrl!fsttoo.dec.com!gallo
From: gallo@fsttoo.dec.com (Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Laser 128 & Apple Disk 3.5
Message-ID: <8802021330.AA13316@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: 2 Feb 88 13:30:56 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 53



	As a recent buyer of an Apple Disk 3.5 for use on my 
Laser 128,I'd like to share my impressions.

	First some background.My laser has the built in Universal
Disk Controller firmware which is (*Supposedly*) compatible with
the Central Point Software Universal Disk Controller card and 
the //gs Smartport firmware.

	I bought the drive and installed it on my laser as per
the instruction manual.I then had to remove the yellow shipping
'disk' from the drive.I pressed the eject button on the right side
of the drive and *nothing* happened.I then proceded to insert 
a paper clip into the 'manual eject' hole in the eject button and
I sucessfully removed the shipping disk.

	I figured it was a fluke of the shipping disk and proceeded
to put in a blank diskette and I sucessfully formatted it.I again
pressed the eject button to eject the disk and again *nothing* happened.

	At this point I figure that the drive is not working correctly.
I drove back to the dealer who tell me that since the Laser uses a MAC
compatible drive and the MAC can eject disks via software,the eject
button gets disabled by the controller.After reading MAC section of
the Disk 3.5 user's guide I found this to be documented. :-(

	To make a long story short,I wrote an assembly language program
to call SmartPort to eject a disk.The eject portion of the code works
great but I cant get the UDC firmware to return the proper status upon
returning from an error condition.

	Otherwise,I'm satisfied with the whole setup.Its a little
'pricey' though.The drive cost $300 at a dealer and that was after
a little 'haggling'.This is about the price I would have had to pay
via mail order also,so I'm not too unhappy.

	BTW,Thanks to all who had replied to my request for mail
order sources.My original intention was to buy a Laser 800k 3.5 drive.
After several inquiries to both local and mail order Laser dealers,
I found that that particular item was back ordered.

	Does anybody have a good (read: reliable & cheap or free :-))
backup utility that can use multiple 5.25's to backup a 3.5.My 
computer budget is shot for a while and I now have a backup problem.


			      Tom Gallo (/tomg)

*************************************************************************
**                                                                     **
** The opinions expressed here are my OWN and not those of my employer **
**                                                                     **
*************************************************************************