8 Sep
2023
8 Sep
'23
10:54 p.m.
I have had better luck with a P-III motherboard that connects to the 34-50
pin adapter in the middle and 8" on the other end. This way you can trick
the BIOS of the computer to think the 8" drive is a 1.2Mb 5 1/4". With
this set up I have made a bootable DOS 6.22 8" disk, so I know it works.
THEN use the USB port to copy files as a separate drive. The USB to floppy
devices are pretty good for 3.5" but I would not expect a direct adapter
from the 8" to be reliable.
Bill
On Fri, Sep 8, 2023 at 3:59 PM Anders Nelson via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
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