Disk II

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Two Disk II drives

The Disk II was a 5¼-inch floppy disk drive developed by Steve Wozniak and manufactured by Apple Computer . The device first appeared on the market in 1978, priced at US $ 495 on pre-orders, and later sold for $ 595 with the controller card and cables. The Disk II was developed as a drive for the Apple II computer, which replaced the slower cassette drive for data storage.

On the left a normal punched writing notch, on the right a diskette with two writing notches, (square disk hole punch - far right)
Disk IIc drive.

The normal storage capacity per disk side was 114 KB up to the Apple operating system ( Apple DOS ) DOS 3.2.1, or 140 KB with the 1980 DOS 3.3 and the later ProDOS . The read and write access was only one-sided. The back of the floppy disk could only be used if the floppy disk was turned over and provided with a second notch (e.g. a disk hole punch ). (Doubling the storage capacity, but not at the same time)

Apple later changed the design of the drive so that it would better match the case of the Apple IIe and also offered a version with two drives in one case under the name DuoDisk .

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