USB Superdrive (floppy drive)?

[nightingale]

So when the iMacs first came out, we had USB floppy drives for them, since the iMacs didn't have an internal floppy drive. I swear I remember these being official Apple SuperDrives capable of reading 800k floppies. But I can find no trace online that Apple ever made a USB floppy drive, let alone one that could read 800k floppies. Did I imagine this? Was there ever a USB drive capable of reading/writing 800k floppies?

 

[lisa2]

So when the iMacs first came out, we had USB floppy drives for them, since the iMacs didn't have an internal floppy drive. I swear I remember these being official Apple SuperDrives capable of reading 800k floppies. But I can find no trace online that Apple ever made a USB floppy drive, let alone one that could read 800k floppies. Did I imagine this? Was there ever a USB drive capable of reading/writing 800k floppies?

Your imagining this... there never was a USB drive that supported 800K Mac format disks. The original iMac did have the signals to connect a SuperDrive to the main logic board if you added the connector and used early firmware. This was undocumented and unsupported of course.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

minuszerodegrees.net

Here’s a page of floppy drive models known to work with 720k DOS disks. I would assume that they’d also read 800k Mac disks just fine?
I’ve got one of the supported drives but no 800k disks to test with.

 

[CC_333]

Here’s a page of floppy drive models known to work with 720k DOS disks. I would assume that they’d also read 800k Mac disks just fine?

Nope.

720k DOS disks use the same (or similar) MFM encoding as 1.44 disks, but Macintosh 400k and 800k disks use GCR, which is different and incompatible with MFM. Hence the problem (PC drives – including those that support double density disks – are MFM-only and can't read GCR disks).

c

 

[bibilit]

A couple of aftermarket USB drives were available, probably not Apple units though.

As said previously, no support for 800k floppies, only 1.44 Mb

 

[joshc]

The ones I remember (and I still have one) are the Iomega/LaCie thin USB floppy drives, but they don't support 800K disks, only 1.44MB.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Nope.

720k DOS disks use the same (or similar) MFM encoding as 1.44 disks, but Macintosh 400k and 800k disks use GCR, which is different and incompatible with MFM. Hence the problem (PC drives – including those that support double density disks – are MFM-only and can't read GCR disks).

c

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Forrest]

when iMacs were new, the way to read Apple 3.5 inch disks was to get an Imation SuperDisk, which could read/write 1.4 MB 3.5 inch disks and 120 MB SuperDisks

ironically, Apple dropped support for 3.5 inch disks in the OS years ago, but Windows 10 still supports them.

 

[robin-fo]

ironically, Apple dropped support for 3.5 inch disks in the OS years ago, but Windows 10 still supports them.

Are you sure? Although there is no longer native support for HFS, you can still copy them with 'dd'; maybe you can even initialize them in HFS+

 

[lisa2]

Are you sure? Although there is no longer native support for HFS, you can still copy them with 'dd'; maybe you can even initialize them in HFS+

robin-fo is absolutely correct! Just formatted an HFS+ floppy using my M1 mini and a external USB drive. Also modern MacOS also supports PC floppies just fine.

 

[Forrest]

HFS+ was introduced with OS 8.1, which runs slow on a 68k Mac. Floppies were mostly used by 68K Mac users because programs could actually fit on a floppy. By the time PowerMacs were introduced, programs were bigger so many users switched to higher capacity disks such as Zip, Syquest, CDR, etc.

 

[CC_333]

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Of course!

It's confusing, because physically, an 800k Mac disk is exactly the same as a 720k DOS disk (a double density disk is a double density disk).

c

 

[bibilit]

an 800k Mac disk is exactly the same as a 720k DOS disk

Yes, all the difference is the way information is stored in the disk, hence the difference in size (720 versus 800)

 

[macuserman]

was to get an Imation SuperDisk, which could read/write 1.4 MB 3.5 inch disks and 120 MB SuperDisks

What? You mean I can actually use that drive for something lol. I’ve had one of those kicking around for ages just waiting for me to toss it out.

 

[nightingale]

Thank you all for confirming my declining memory! I guess by 1998 no one was really using 800k disks anymore. I suspect I was remembering the Imation SuperDisk drives, which have a similar enough sounding name to fool me, and a quick google image search confirms that those were most likely the ones I remember using back in the day.

I've found some interesting articles of people building hardware to modify how a standard PC floppy drive works so it can read and write Amiga disks, which I think the drives worked in a similar way to the Macintosh drives. I wonder if something similar would be possible for HFS 800k floppies?

 

[olePigeon]

@macuserman Not only do they make great high density floppy drives, but they can sometimes read disks that other drives can't. I've used mine to salvage more than a handful of old floppies that I couldn't read on a regular floppy drive.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Interesting. I've been meaning to track down one of the few laptops that had one built in. ThinkPad 770 did I think, or had one as an option. The WinBook XL2 had one built in to all configs - that's the one I'm after, but it's a bit rare.

 

[LaPorta]

I am sure someone could rig up a way to use a SuperDrive natively via USB. Obviously the AppleSauce can read all this stuff via USB, it just doesn't mount disks in the file system.

 

[Fizzbinn]

@macuserman Not only do they make great high density floppy drives, but they can sometimes read disks that other drives can't. I've used mine to salvage more than a handful of old floppies that I couldn't read on a regular floppy drive.

Oh that's a great tip! Thanks!

 

[Forrest]

Just used my SuperDisk to install Star Trek 25th Anniversary (5 floppies) on my G3 300 MHz iBook - worked fine.