| Curious about the Alltech Focus Drive [message #384255] |
Thu, 30 May 2019 20:18  |
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Originally posted by: Matthew Power
I have one. I think I'm pretty lucky to have gotten it. It didn't break the bank because it was part of a IIgs system I bought.
It has an IBM 2 GB drive from 1998 bolted and strapped to it. Haven't tried it in my IIe, but it works quite well in my IIgs. For fun, I used the USB aspect of a CFFA3000 to load the Focus with System 6.0.4. Runs great. I'm a happy hobbyist!
So according to the date stamp, my Focus drive is now 24 years old which surprised me. I hadn't realized that cards like that existed in 1995.
Does anyone know the history of these drives? Are the creators still active in the Apple II community? Have any of you good folks upgraded a Focus with the newer CF adapters or otherwise?
Thank you for reading.
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| Re: Curious about the Alltech Focus Drive [message #384265 is a reply to message #384255] |
Fri, 31 May 2019 09:25  |
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Originally posted by: Delfs
On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 7:18:31 PM UTC-5, Matthew Power wrote:
> Does anyone know the history of these drives? Are the creators still active in the Apple II community? Have any of you good folks upgraded a Focus with the newer CF adapters or otherwise?
>
I got my Focus drive from Tony Diaz when the company was still active. I do not recall if he acquired or developed the interface card.
Tony is still active in the A2 community, go meet him at www.KansasFest.org in July. (Blatant Plug!) He is one of the best sources of A2 hardware history out there. I wont even mention the collection of unique hardware he brings to the show. I think of him as 'The Informant' as he seems to have been privy to many back room conversations and has many an interesting aside.
Yes, the Focus IDE interface works well with an IDE to CF adapter. (And subsequently CF to SD also, just FYI.)
I've been known to use CiderPress on my windows PC and move the CF card back and forth. One of my cards has the power mod to the send power through the ID plug. One card had the dual CF so I could have master/slave hard drives', not as useful once I started using CF cards of unmanageable size. 32 Meg 'partitions' on a multiple Gig storage seems wasteful but wear leveling allows me to justify it for longevity purposes. ;)
-Ed
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| Re: Curious about the Alltech Focus Drive [message #384266 is a reply to message #384255] |
Fri, 31 May 2019 11:15 |
David Schmidt
Messages: 993
Registered: October 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 5/30/19 8:18 PM, Matthew Power wrote:
> Have any of you good folks upgraded a Focus with the newer CF adapters or otherwise?
I have one on loan; I wrote the Apple /// driver for it. My first order
of business was to buy a CF adapter for it and plug a CF card in. One
painful thing is the only partitioning software there is runs on a GS,
and it's minimally functional. It was hard to set up a partitions with
precise sizes as the UI is pretty clunky.
It's pretty speedy in practice even without DMA as the card moves 16
bits at a time to/from the storage device. GS drivers in particular can
make it haul.
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| Re: Curious about the Alltech Focus Drive [message #385832 is a reply to message #384255] |
Wed, 07 August 2019 22:46 |
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Originally posted by: Robert Allred
>
> So according to the date stamp, my Focus drive is now 24 years old which surprised me. I hadn't realized that cards like that existed in 1995.
>
I bought mine new around that time. Was the most expensive computer peripheral I had purchased as a teenager (got my GS used dirt cheap). Worked great when I took my IIgs off to college.
But when I got my first MacBook, I lent my GS to a little brother who then donated it to a thrift store when he got board with it...
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