10 Jan
2023
10 Jan
'23
5:16 a.m.
Hello Chuck
Speaking of old floppies, when I was busy converting floppies (I've now
been retired for 10 years) I frequently had problems reading some 5.25"
disks, but only on specific drives. Those disks came from IBM systems,
probably S/3.
I cannot be sure that the solution holds, but it was my experience that
those "faulty" discs could be read on TEAC FD235GFR drives orignating
from Japan. Not the ones from the Philippines ! That puzzled me, until I
called MIchael Cotgrove from (then) Intermedia in the UK, who told me
that he knew that some IBM systems ran the drives at a lower speed, and
that that very well could be the problem. After that explanation, I only
used the 142U version of the drive, and the problems went away.
Does this sound familiar?
--Nico
On 2023-01-09 20:12, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 1/9/23 10:23, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
Also, a normal USB Floppy drive can only handle
1.44MB formatted floppies.
720k might work (but there is nothing in the standards to describe this)
and oddball formats are right out.
I've found that most 3.5" USB floppy drives also support the 1.23MB
8x1024 disks. (e.g. legacy 3-mode drive equivalent).
Probably not useful for most people, but noteworthy.
--Chuck