Starting over with 8" drive on PC

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 20:49:01 -0800 (PST), Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote: Are you sure about this? I thought the only difference between 160K disks and 180K disks was 8 sectors per track vs 9 sectors per track. I don't remember an FM/MFM difference (but I could easily be wrong). FM vs MFM is a controller issue, not a drive issue. The drive should be fine, even if it weren't a Tandon 848 (which is a fine drive... I have one in a Dataram Qbus chassis with a Dataram Qbus controller). Unfortunately, I can't give you any specific help with your 8"-on-a-PC problem... I have limited CP/M experience on 8"-equipped machines (I have one, but haven't played with it)... mostly, I've used 5.25" disks on Kaypros, and RX01s and RX02s... not what you are looking for. Someone here mentioned a utility (IIRC) that should tell you for certain if your floppy controller can do FM... I can't remember exactly what that is, but I would expect _that_ to be the way to go. Also, if you are doing this with an older motherboard (no onboard floppy controller in particular), it might be easier to be sure exactly what FDC you are using. All I can suggest is to focus more on your choice of FDC and application software and less on the floppy mechanism itself. -ethan