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Have you ever found your 720k (or 828k if you use 10-sectors) disks too
limiting? Have you ever wished for a 1.44 meg drive like your friends
have on their Mac's or PC's? It looks as if you can now have your wish.

One of the new products available for the ST that seems to be hot is
the POWERDRIVE from DreamPark Development.

The POWERDRIVE is a complete external 3.5" drive and it comes with all
necessary hardware and the modification board for the inside of the CPU
(it can be installed internally but requires another power supply board,
cutting up your case and more hardware technical expertise). According
to Brad, DreamPark's GEnie on-line representative:

"We have designed a rock solid internal board that allows us to sense
media changes as well as sense what kind of disk is in the drive. It
knows whether you have a 360, 720 or 1.4, and it knows when the disk has
been changed. The drive and the format are standard IBM 1.44 meg, but
with the PowerFormatter software included in the price, you can format up
to 1.7 megs reliably. We are using a new and better designed 2793 chip,
and the mod board plugs in where the old 1772 was. It's removed, and a
socket goes in that allows a ribbon cable plug in for access to the CPU.

Also needed are two lines from the sound chip, since this chip controls
the drive select. It is 100% upward compatible with the 1772 chip, it
acts just like a 1772 when there is a 360K or 720K disk in the drive. No
difference. But when a 1.4 meg disk is inserted, BANGO! Off to the
races..."

"The PowerDrive works with SuperCharger... as long as you format your
disks first using the Power Formatter and the "DOS BOOT" option. You can
read, write and even copy HD (High Density) disks!"

"As for GCR compatibility, it works well with Spectre 720k formatted
disks, but we are having problems reading and writing GCR ('real' Mac)
disks. A PowerDrive is in the hands of Dave Small even as we speak, and
we are working on this end to insure that we get 100% compatibility with
Spectre. In a recent message in the Gadgets RT, he seemed optimistic that
some software revision might be all that would be required."

(Note: The above quotes are a compilation of many different posts left on
GEnie.)

I don't know about you folks, but being able to utilize 1.44-1.7 megs per
floppy disk is quite impressive to me. If you want to order or have more
questions, give Brad a call at 801-943-4370. Oh? The price? I'm not
for sure what the final retail price will be, but Brad stated they had an
introductory special for only $259.95, however I don't know if this price
is still good or for how long.

Until next week...

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You're right, Fire, it looks like there's a logo for some other company in the upper-right-hand-corner of the drive, and that apple logo is nothing more than a sticker.

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we posted at almost the same time, cinemo!

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666th poster and 666th thread-creator
Mod of the Mac II series Forums
Total 68K Macs liberated: 7
Regular Disappear!

I have an old st and cant bear to throw it, it is a lovely 68k.

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Thanks for all the reply's. I decided to give it a miss but if it was high density for the st I would've bought it for less than a fiver for sure.

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