Apple II and/or classic Macintosh support

[greenonline]

I've searched in both the open and closed issues for "Apple", "Mac" and "Macintosh" and not found anyting obvious (so, apologies if this has been asked before).

This is a feature request for the ability to connect the drive to an Apple II or a classic vintage Macintosh.

I realise that this is a two-part problem:

• Disk format, and;
• Interpreting the different physical electrical interface (ID20 rather than the usual ID34).

Is there anything in the works, or a proto-type firmware available?

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I have raised a question on the Retrocomputing site of Stack Exchange regarding the glue logic required for the physical interface and cabling changes, see Which wires need to be changed to use a Gotek floppy emulator on an Apple Mac?.

I had been hoping that there might be a discrete logic solution to translate the Apple's electrical signals to those of a standard floppy drive, which the Gotek could then be conected to. That way (the interface part of) the firmware would not need to be changed when moving the Gotek from use on a BBC to a Macintosh or Apple II, and vice versa.

However, after some thought, it seems that it would be a bit of a complex job to implement with discrete logic on an external PCB, and that it would be easier (relatively speaking) to just do the whole thing in firmware. This would mean that the Gotek would require reflashing depending upon which platform it was connected to.

There is a video of a HxC prototype which seemingly accomplishes this (on an Apple IIc), Slim HxC Floppy Emulator on Apple 2c, so I was wondering if you might be able to as well.

FWIW, much of the information above (as well as in the SE.Retrocomputing question) is reproduced in my blog, Gotek and Apple ][ and Macintosh - although that page also has some other bits of related info that might be useful.