18 Oct
2015
18 Oct
'15
10:50 a.m.
Did the disks for the original IBM 23FD "Minnow" floppy disk also have
the sector/index hole near the edge, like the Memorex 650/651? The
Minnow was used as a read-only device for loading microcode, and the
disks were only factory written. I haven't seen an actual Minnow disk,
but since Memorex was one of the companies making plug-compatible
equipment, I wouldn't be surprised if they designed the 650/651 medium
to be mechanically interchangeable with the 23FD disks.
The Memorex 650/651 supported read/write use, and had more than twice
the formatted capacity of the 23FD, so the on-disk format clearly
didn't match the 23FD.