Tag Archives: Drivers

ON THREE CPS Universal Disk Driver

We’ve located a copy of the CPS Universal Disk Driver that Bob Consorti wrote and distributed through ON THREE in 1987. It’s the only file on the non-bootable SOS disk included in the image (download ON_THREE_Universal_CPS_Driver). You can build this into your existing driver files with the SOS SCP.

cps

Basically, the earlier UniDisk driver only allows you to use the Apple Liron card and Apple 800K drives. This one was written in response to reader requests for similar functionality so they could access third party devices such as the CPS controller card and drive, the AE 800K drive, etc. You can also access your Liron/UniDisk setup with it.

Note that only one 3.5″ 800K drive can be included in a daisy-chain with 5.25″ Disk /// or MicroSci drives, and it must be the last device on the chain.

The (Mostly) Compleat List of Apple /// Drivers

One of the first things a hobbyist venturing into the deep, dark and still-largely uncharted waters of the Apple /// learns is that you need a driver for just about everything on (and in) the machine that isn’t the actual bits floating around.  Want to plug in a printer?  Need a driver.  Does that Apple II card work in the ///?  Probably… If someone wrote a driver.  Hey, look at that shiny rare /// card I just got on eBay!  Didn’t come with a driver though, so it just sits there.

Keyboard.  Disk drive.  Sound.  Video output.  SOS needs a driver for all of ’em.  And now we’ve moved far enough away from the ///’s “heyday” (such as it was) that we may have lost some entirely to the mists of time.  Or no one knows where to find them any more.  Witness the Great UniDisk 3.5″ Driver Hunt that took place recently.

Fortunately, there exists a list.  Less than (but still somewhat) fortunately, it lives on a disk image on the WAP DVD.  In AppleWorks database format.  So not inaccessible to hobbyists, but not exactly intuitively reachable for new ///’ers.  To alleviate some of the difficulty associated with learning about the /// (but mostly because I’m just massively lazy in a weirdly paradoxical way – my indolence comes at great personal effort), I extracted the database from the disk image (APPLE-3-WAP-shr-04a, obviously) and made a handy PDF.

The list is dated 30 May 1988, and I know Bob Consorti published at least one or two more as late as possibly 1995, so it isn’t complete but it’s pretty close. The file contains information for more than 75 known drivers: name, version, size, producer and description – it’s all there.

If I can find a later version in the WAP archive, I’ll update this file.  In the meantime, share and enjoy.

Apple III Drivers List (as of 30-May-88) drivers-thumb

Download the list (PDF | 75KB)