One problem with these older machines, is the diskettes. Where do you get them? You can’t just go into the local store and get new ones.
I’m going to have to start looking for some additional diskettes in the near future. If you are using your Apple II frequently, you may be in the same boat.
The diskettes I will need are for my:
5 1/4″ floppy drive which uses either Single Sided (SS)/Double Density (DD) or Double Sided (DS)/DD
3 1/2″ diskette drive which uses DS/DD
Doing a little research on the internet got me these tips.
The 5 1/4″ SS/DD and DS/DD diskettes had hub rings where newer higher density diskettes, which do not work well, don’t have the hub rings. One thing I always did, was buy the DS/DD diskettes. I picked up a disk notcher, for around $5 or $6, which punches a write protect notch on the other side of the disk so you could use both sides of the diskette. There was quite a bit of debate over doing this, although if the diskette formatted on both sides I never had a problem with them afterwards. Another important thing to look for is the sleeves to they go into. Make sure they come with them. The last time I bought 25 in a bundle with out sleeves. I couldn’t find any online.
The 3 1/2″ diskettes should not have a hole in the top left corner. The ones I have, have a square dent where the hole could have been cut. There should be a hole in the top right corner, usually with a little plastic cover that can open or close the hole for write protecting the diskette.
One place that I have found, that still sells these online is OldSoftware.com at http://www.oldsoftware.com/floppy_disks.html and is where I bought from last. The diskettes worked fine I just forgot to order sleeves at the same time.
This morning I found another place simply enough it is called floppydisk.com at http://www.floppydisk.com/index.htm and in addition has some other services as well.
On the topic of 3.5 inch disks, did you know it’s possible to use DS/HD (high density) 3.5 inch floppies on the Apple II? – and I don’t mean in a high density sense. If I take an unformatted DS/HD 3.5 and format it normally on my Apple IIGS, it functions as a DD (double density) disk with the usual 800kb capacity. I created a lot of such disks in the early to mid 2000s and none of them have had any trouble.
3.5 HD disks are potentially easier to obtain because they ran on IBM PCs, so there are/were a lot more of them around.
A friend of mine suggested the thinner spread of magnetic material on an HD 3.5 made it a bit less durable than a DD, but I don’t have any hard data on this, and I haven’t had any of these discs fail on me so far.
On the topic of using 5.25 HD disks… I tried that a handful of times (when I was a kid!) and I couldn’t even format them. Now I don’t know if that’s because I overlooked the presence or absence of various write protect or alignment holes, but in my experience, my 5.25 drive could never do anything with a 5.25 HD disk.
– Wade
I have had the same experience as Wade when using HD 5.25″ disks– they won’t even format. I doubt the problem is because of the alignment hole. The disk mechanism doesn’t even have a sensor for it! 🙂