«
Everything I know about floppy disks
2023-08-28
Floppy disk drives are curious things. We know them as the slots that
ingest those small almost-square plastic "floppy disks" and we only
really see them now in Computer Museums. But there's a lot going on in
that humble square of plastic and I wanted to write down what I've
learned so far.
»
https://thejpster.org.uk/blog/blog-2023-08-28/
--
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven(a)gmail.com
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Anyone in Sheffield UK? There is an Acorn Archemedies computer I am
interested in buying but the guy is collection only. I am in the USA, but
interested in buying and repairing the system.
- Ethan
Sent from my iPhone
> On Sep 8, 2023, at 13:16, Wayne S <wayne.sudol(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> but presents itself to an OS as a Mass Storage Device (block device).
Anders, for what practical purpose would you do that?
It’s not like there’s so many 8 inch floppies around to make it feasible. You would have to have a LOT of intelligence in the Usb interface due to the different physical formats let alone the software formats.
It would be difficult.
>> If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and
>> don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the
>> endless immensity of the sea.
On Sun, 10 Sep 2023, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
> We must teach Fred to long for the endless immensity of the written word
> (in book form, focusing specifically on floppy disk drives).
45 years ago, I started writing about repairing Honda cars. Wasn't getting far
until an acquaintance who fancied himself to be a writer got me to agree to do
a book with him. He sold the idea to John Muir Publications (publisher of the
Volkswagen Idiot book, different John Muir). I wrote it, my co-author edited,
the publisher put their own editor on it, who butchered it. But, the publisher
also brought in Peter Aschwanden, who is a GREAT automotive illustrator (see
the VW idiot book). In 1979, I switched to TRS80, and did it with Electric
Pencil, and then Scripsit. I had a DTC300 Hytype-I daisy wheel printer. I
printed it 8.5" wide down the middle of 14 7/8 paper, giving lots of room for
comments, etc. For the illustrator, I printed it on the left side of the wide
paper, leaving a large area for doodles. The publisher's editor butchered it
badly enough that my co-author switched to a pseudonym. With the publisher's
accounting, never got enough in royalties to fuuly pay all of my expenses.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Keep-Your-Honda-Alive/dp/0912528257
In the 1990s, I started writing about floppy disks, how FM/MFM worked, IBM/WD
track and sector structure, directory structures, DOS Utilities, disk repair,
etc.
But, got bogged down with too much to do, such as closing my office, etc., . .
.
20 years ago, I started writing an undergraduate textbook on Information
Science. How searches and search engines work, and how to search better, how
companies cheat the search engines (SEO), relevance ranking, trade-offs between
recall and precision (cf. Buckland), the DIK[W[E]]
(Data/Information/Knowledge/[Wisdom/[Enlightenment]]) pyramid, etc. I wanted
to make a community college class out of it. But, certain administrators (who I
failed to ever defenestrate) refused to consider understanding of information
to be appropriate for community college (anything beyond their total lack of
comprehension was "inappropriate")
(Do YOU consider it "computer literate" to create a memo about a room change
for a meeting in WordPerfect, print it with a color printer (for the logo and a
ruling line), SCAN that printed memo, and send it out as an ATTACHMENT to an
email with subject line of "FYI" and text body of "See the attachment"?)
I haven't made progress on it lately.
So, yes, I have always longed for the endless immensity of the written word, .
. .
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
I got the chance to attend another great VCF! This time in Chicago over
this past weekend.
Most images should be able to click and enlarge (if not, wiggle the page a
bit and try again).
https://voidstar.blog/vcf-mw-midwest-2023/
I've started pulling parts for people who have requested them and keep
finding things I had forgotten. A few things of possible interest include:
PDP-8A parts including backplanes, most CPU boards, 128K, MM board MM8-AA/AB
8-E boxes and boards
DECMATE Rainbow, and PRO systems and parts
A few 11/05, 11/10 boxes
a new 54-21149 KN15 cpu
VS40X 4 plane color options
SI-QS 1000 board labeled QED 993 CPU
Tape drive heads
LA36, LA120, and other printers and parts
various VTs and monitors and parts
MFM and floppy drives
Qbus boxes and hundreds of boards
1000s of DEC boards and parts
possible a few 3000 and 5000 boxes and parts
If anyone wants to stop by and look for things, please contact me off list
to set up a time. Most of the people who have stopped by would say I have
quite a lot of DEC items.
If you have any questions contact me off list.
There have been a number of Ebay listings for various ns32k software, QIC
tapes and 1/2 inch tapes. I thought I would buy them if there were no other
bids to try to recover the contents.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225759541222https://www.ebay.com/itm/225759543101https://www.ebay.com/itm/225750706891
But there was a buyer and I didn't want to fight over something where I
don't have the actual hardware. Maybe someone here is the buyer? I am just
curious if this will end up on bitsavers in the future?
/Mattis
Hi all,
I just bought a very clean, DSDD 8" disk drive off eBay and it has a 50p
connector which I guess is the common Shugart type? I also found a 50p->
34p adaptor PCB design someone documented online.
I haven't delved much into floppy formats (high level or low level) but I'm
somewhat familiar with filesystems from FAT12. My ultimate goal is to
create an open-source USB adaptor that reads/writes the contents of an 8"
disk but presents itself to an OS as a Mass Storage Device (block device).
Is such a thing possible?
I once created a terrible custom format for storing data on a flash chip
which required no low-level format, but I expect a magnetic disk needs
headers/trailers to know when a track starts/stops so it can skip around.
I checked out the KyroFlux website and it seems there are dozens of formats
that were used for 8" disks - is there a favorite format among the
community that allows full use of a 1.2MB 8" disk?
Any pointers are appreciated!
Anders
www.andersknelson.com
