Did Apple have a way for the new mac to Read APPLE II disks.

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NovellNetware's picture
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Did Apple have a way for the new mac to Read APPLE II disks.

So besides having a drive for the disks and a controller. Did the Mac have a way of reading your apple II disks? I do know it wouldn'tbe asap. Since they sold the 2 systems side by side. I did find the normal Apple Iie card. You could use that back and forth. But that was really just a final way to get rid of the Apple II for good.

 

Just wondering,

 

Josh

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The //e card was indeed

The //e card was indeed mostly intended by Apple as a way to get rid of the Apple II for good and sell Macs into K-12 schools. 

If I remember right, there was a utility to copy files from a ProDOS formatted 3.5" floppy on the 68k Macs, but Apple didn't offer any way to connect an Apple II compatible (GCR) 5.25" floppy drive to a Mac.  The 5.25" floppy drive Apple sold for Macs was designed to read MS-DOS (MFM) formatted floppies.  To make matters even less convenient, a large portion of Apple II users stuck to heavy use of the older Apple DOS 3.3 format for 5.25" floppies instead of ProDOS even though Apple had largely quit supporting anything but ProDOS by the time things like the //e card came out.

The way most people do that kind of transfer involves having both systems and a serial cable using software like ADTPro.

 

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Kennect and Rapport

I believe a few of the original engineers of the WOZ chip opened their own company, something like The Engineering Company and sold various Kennect drives with a Rapport hardware device that would connect to the Mac external floppy port.

One of them was 5-1/4" and would read Apple ][ disks.

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I didn't think about that.

I didn't think about that. Say using a iigs or a few other things. But as stated. Would be 3.1/2 and prodos. So not really convenient.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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ADTPro

I second the suggestion to use ADTPro, as finding a Kennect drive on eBay is hard and expensive (I have one somewhere in my storage).

Some years ago I connected my Apple //c and my 2008 MacMini2,1 with a USB to Serial cable (maybe Keyspan) and I was able to move my whole 5-1/4" floppy collection to my Mac for use in Virtual ][ emulation.

For example, I have used the Apple ][ series to keep annual financial information, starting with Home Accountant and then moving to the must faster Time is Money.

I have now moved over all of my "data" from these years to work in Virtual ][ on my High Sierra MacMini.

 

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I know about the addtpro and use it all the time.

I know abotu the adtpro and use it all the time . This was more of a hitsory quetion. Due to my parents getting an apple II plus and then me latter working on Pc clones. I got really good at pc clones. But the Apple II was so so and the Macintosh was pretty much. Well I only read about in a magazine. So since I got this Apple II plus a few years back. I have been finding all of this additional goodies for it. Though good luck finding them or at today's prices getting said item. But that started me thinking. Upon reading the vintage magazines. I didn't see a way to easily get the Apple data to the mac side of things. At least very easy. As one pointed out. At least one third party solution existed.  Kind of reminds me of the ps/2 models. The all mostly had 3.1/2" floppies. But if you wanted a 5.1/4" floppy external drive. That was big bucks. (At least the official ibm version.) Thank goodness that is all you needed.  But with Apple and different formats.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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Floppy EMU on an Apple //c and a Mac

The Floppy EMU ( https://www.bigmessowires.com/category/macintosh-floppy-emu/ ) which will connect to either the Apple ][ floppy port or the legacy Macintosh floppy port (with different firmware loaded in first) is another way to move data from a Mac to an Apple ][ and back in today's world.

And historically you could move data from a 5-1/4" floppy to a 3.5" floppy on the Apple ][ (with conversion tools if the original source was DOS 3.3, as the 3.5" must be ProDOS) and then the Mac could read the data off the 3.5" floppy with the use of the Apple File Exchange software that Apple would provide.

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NovellNetware wrote:I know
NovellNetware wrote:

I know abotu the adtpro and use it all the time . This was more of a hitsory quetion. Due to my parents getting an apple II plus and then me latter working on Pc clones. I got really good at pc clones. But the Apple II was so so and the Macintosh was pretty much. Well I only read about in a magazine. So since I got this Apple II plus a few years back. I have been finding all of this additional

goodies for it. Though good luck finding them or at today's prices getting said item. But that started me thinking. Upon reading the vintage magazines. I didn't see a way to easily get the Apple data to the mac side of things. At least very easy. As one pointed out. At least one third party solution existed.  Kind of reminds me of the ps/2 models. The all mostly had 3.1/2" floppies. But if you wanted a 5.1/4" floppy external drive. That was big bucks. (At least the official ibm version.) Thank goodness that is all you needed.  But with Apple and different formats.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

 

Well, it isn't like things were 20 years ago when you could get lots of Apple II stuff for free from people who didn't see any value in it...  BUT...  Compared to 1978-1995...  Now is a CHEAP time to get Apple II stuff.  As high as some stuff might seem on eBay, etc., it is usually still WAY cheaper than it was back in the day.  And thats dollars to dollars.  When you consider inflation...  Back in 1981 an Apple II+ was over $2000.  And $2000 was a lot of money back then!  You could buy a really decent used car for that.  Nowdays that'd get you some clapped out clunker pretty much!

 

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I second that motion...

I used my extra time during the Pandemic to restore my Apple //c with internal Z-RAM card and repurchased a recapped Mac SE/30.

I can now download for free and play with software that costs hundreds to thousands of dollars originally, so I never experienced them, until now!

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