Apple 3.5 Drive

Background

Beginning in September 1986, Apple adopted a unified cross-platform product strategy essentially eliminating platform-specific peripherals where possible. The Apple 3.5 Drive (A9M0106) is an 800K external drive released in conjunction with the Apple IIGS computer and replaced the beige-colored Macintosh 800K External Drive. It works on both the Apple IIGS as well as the Macintosh. It came in a case similar to the UniDisk, but in Platinum gray. Like the UniDisk 3.5, the Apple 3.5 Drive includes Apple II-specific features such as a manual disk eject button and a daisy-chain connector which allows two drives to be connected to an Apple II computer. The Macintosh however could still only accommodate one external drive, and ignores use of the eject button. Unlike the Macintosh 800K External Drive, the Apple 3.5 Drive can be used natively with the 64-kilobyte ROM stock Macintosh 128K and 512K computers without the HD20 INIT, albeit only with 400K MFS formatted disks. Designed as a universal external drive replacement, the Apple 3.5 Drive was eventually made compatible with the remaining Apple II models in production upon the introduction of the Apple IIc Plus and the Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card for the Apple IIe.