MFM Floppy Drives?

Oct 15, 2021
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Has anyone here ever encountered a PC floppy drive on a Macintosh clone? The Tarzana motherboard design did make accommodations for a MFM style floppy drive, but I've yet to find photos of a board with those components installed.
Anyone seen one?

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Anden Selmani

New Tinkerer
Sep 28, 2022
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Albania
Technote for the LPX-40 motherboard
I don't think this was ever used on a shipping product. It would have greatly limited disk compatibility which probably would have not been seen in a positive light.
That being said, browsing everymac shows about a billion Mac Clones where the only graphic evidence of existence is a tiny thumbnail from the 90s.
There's probably a ton of clones that were scrapped because they looked like boring PC stuff.

The Starmax that shipped had a bezel without a cutout for the eject button.
Even the various prototype CHRP Macs seemed to use a Mac/GCR floppy.
hey look, MacOS 7.6 for CHRP. one of two known copies of CHRP MacOS... neither archived
Unreleased CHRP StarMax
Another Motorola Viper CHRP prototype

Supposedly the Gossamer G3 logic board (as seen on the 'beige' G3s) also has a header for a PC-style MFM floppy drive... under the Mac floppy socket. I haven't confirmed this though, nor have I seen any pictures or evidence that it's ever been tested.
 
Oct 15, 2021
168
215
43
Technote for the LPX-40 motherboard
I don't think this was ever used on a shipping product. It would have greatly limited disk compatibility which probably would have not been seen in a positive light.
That being said, browsing everymac shows about a billion Mac Clones where the only graphic evidence of existence is a tiny thumbnail from the 90s.
There's probably a ton of clones that were scrapped because they looked like boring PC stuff.

The Starmax that shipped had a bezel without a cutout for the eject button.
Even the various prototype CHRP Macs seemed to use a Mac/GCR floppy.
hey look, MacOS 7.6 for CHRP. one of two known copies of CHRP MacOS... neither archived
Unreleased CHRP StarMax
Another Motorola Viper CHRP prototype

Supposedly the Gossamer G3 logic board (as seen on the 'beige' G3s) also has a header for a PC-style MFM floppy drive... under the Mac floppy socket. I haven't confirmed this though, nor have I seen any pictures or evidence that it's ever been tested.

A "Mac" with ISA slots is the real story here ;)

Thank you for responding with all the great into - especially that dev note about the 4400!
 
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max1zzz

Moderator
Staff member
Sep 23, 2021
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Supposedly the Gossamer G3 logic board (as seen on the 'beige' G3s) also has a header for a PC-style MFM floppy drive... under the Mac floppy socket. I haven't confirmed this though, nor have I seen any pictures or evidence that it's ever been tested.
I'm about 90% sure the board in my beige DT has a MFM header on it. Maybe i'll try desoldeirng the Apple / GCR header and installing a MFM one since the G3 is really a parts mac anyway
 

VicNor

Tinkerer
Apr 13, 2022
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Sweden
I'm about 90% sure the board in my beige DT has a MFM header on it. Maybe i'll try desoldeirng the Apple / GCR header and installing a MFM one since the G3 is really a parts mac anyway
What?! :O Pics or it didn't happen