1 Sep
2022
1 Sep
'22
1:20 p.m.
I've never heard of anyone making 8" Flippy Diskettes.
There were many "notchers" to make flippy 5 1/4" diskettes and even a
drive or two that were designed to "flip" the disk.
The problem with "flipping" as diskette is that both the write protect
notch AND the index/sector hole had to be flipped.
There were many singled sided single or double density 8" systems around
that were at least loosely based on the IBM 3740 format.
For example the DEC RX01/RX02 were single sided single density (RX01) or
Singled Sides Double Density (RX02, double density data only).
Due to the high cost of 8" Floppy Diskette subsystems back in those
days, and the fact the 5 1/4" drives were so much less expensive I don't
know how much of the hobbyist community had 8" floppy systems.
On 9/1/2022 6:10 AM, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
On 8/31/22 13:33, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Someone on Fesse Bouc just found a sealed box of
SS/SD 8" floppies in
their garage.
Most FB types are too young to know 8" disks existed, of course.
Someone suggested punching a notch in them and using both sides.
Was that even possible on 8" disks?
(TBH single-sided actually-floppy floppies are before my time and I
never used 'em. When they were on low-end American 8-bit home
computers, this impecunious young Brit couldn't afford floppy drives
at all. By the time I could, 5.25" DS/DD was the cheapest drive and
cheapest media.)
It would be possible but for the drives mostly being double sided.
The most useful thing for a notcher was to make AOL and other
mailer diskettes writable. Never did the double side thing
much if ever.
Sad day when AOL changed to CDs and you then had to make
coasters or trash them.
thanks
Jim