Today Big Mess o’ Wires is releasing two new products for use with the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator for Apple computers. Remember the dual 5.25 inch floppy emulation mode that was announced back in February? It gave the Floppy Emu Model C hardware the ability to emulate two 5.25 inch drives at once, which is great for two-disk games and for reducing disk swapping. But sadly the Apple IIc and the Disk II Interface Controller card both lack the I/O signals required to control two drives over one cable. I hinted that adapter solutions might be coming soon; now here they are!
The Internal/External Drive Switcher is a two-piece adapter for the Apple IIc, providing an easy way to select which floppy drive will act as Drive 1. This new version 2.0 of the Switcher also adds optional support for dual 5.25 inch floppy emulation. Like the original 1.0 version, it’s a great convenience option for the IIc, which normally can only boot from its internal 5.25 inch floppy drive. Now IIc owners have three options:
| BEHAVIOR | SWITCH ONE | SWITCH TWO |
|---|---|---|
| Swapped Mode Drive 1 is external, Drive 2 is internal |
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| Normal Mode Drive 1 is internal, Drive 2 is external, default Apple IIc behavior |
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| Dual External 5.25 Mode Drive 1 and Drive 2 are external, requires Floppy Emu Model C configured for Dual 5.25 emulation mode |
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| Invalid setting, do not use | |
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The Dual 5.25 Adapter for Disk II Interface Card works with the venerable Apple disk controller card found in most Apple II Plus and IIe computers. This disk controller card has two separate 10 x 2 pin rectangular connectors for two separate drives, instead of supporting two daisy-chained drives on a single cable like the later Apple II models. The Dual 5.25 Adapter takes all the I/O signals from the card’s Drive 1 connector, plus a single enable signal from the card’s Drive 2 connector, and merges them together for use by the Floppy Emu. Hello dual 5.25!
Both products are available now at the BMOW Store.