Apple II Floppy Disks

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Level 10

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Apple II Floppy Disks

I received a box of 5" floppy disk and using ADTPro on the Apple I am able to format the disks then copy software to them. When attempting to read the disks I am finding that these disks will not read. I know the read head is fine on this Apple disk drive since I have other disks with software on them. I am curious if there is a difference between PC and Apple disks. From what I can tell the disks are the same and just need to formatted with the system that intends to use the disk. Any thoughts?

Apple //e-OTHER

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 8:50 AM

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Answer 1

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JustSomeGuy

Level 3

606 points

Apr 27, 2015 7:44 PM in response to QuickPost

You will have that trouble if they are HD (high density) instead of DD (double density).

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Answer 2

QuickPost Author

Level 10

103,305 points

Apr 28, 2015 7:00 AM in response to JustSomeGuy

I didn't even consider that.. Thank you.

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Answer 3

Apr 28, 2015 8:58 AM in response to QuickPost

You will learn to recognize (and of course avoid) them on sight: you will find the inner disc surface very shiny and very black, much more so than DD. HD disks are almost always missing the reinforcing hub ring; DD disks almost always have them. Your Apple II disk drive doesn't have the right power to jiggle the magnetic particles on HD media reliably, so the end result is they're unusable.

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