Hard-sector discs -- how many sectors?

The 8" drive has a 50 pin interface connector, of course, but most of the signals are the same as the SA400 interface. The main differences (from what I rememer) are that the 8" drice may separate index and sector pulses for hard sectored disks, it may have an interal data separator for single-density disks, and it will have a TG43 input to reduce write current on ther inner cyliders. The first 2 things can be jumpered out (so you cna then treat it like a 5.25" drive, the last is only a problem if you're writing. It would eb worht adding a signal for this, actually, if you support dumpling the images back to the physical disks. The 3.5" disk doersn't have an index hole in the sense that the other floppies do. You can't have a 'hard sectored blank disk', for this reason. I suppose it would be _possile_ to make a drive that produced multiple index/sector pulses per vevolution, but I've never seen one. You can alos support 3" drives/disks. The Hitachi drives have a standard 34 pin SA400 interface, the ones that Amstrad used have a 26 pin connector (IIRC) with the same signals on it. 3" disks do have an index hole, the sensor is a light barrier there, not a signal on the spindle motor, but I've never seen or heard of hard sectored disks. -tony