I have a 3B2/1000 that I'm trying to resurrect. The main Winchester drive is dead-ish
(haven't written it off, but it's doing spinup-click-spindown so there's
something big wrong), so I need to label a new drive.
3B2s are DSQD floppies, and I'm trying to figure out my best approach. I have the
utility software in a disk image, but PCs usually don't ship with DSQD drives.
I've found three possible options, but don't know if anyone's used any of them
(or one that I haven't come across).
(1) Mount the 3B2's DSQD floppy in a PC and try to write out the disk using it.
Don't know if the PC's disk controller supports DSQD- I have a Compaq Deskpro
386/25 and a whitebox Pentium that I can try
(2) modify one of the above machine's stock 1.2MB drives to spin at 300RPM. Don't
know if it will write out the disk this way, but found mod. instructions here:
http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/525HDMOD.htm . May work, may not -I'm not sure how QD
and HD head widths compare.
(3) Replace the 3B2's 5.25 DSQD drive with a 3.5" drive and use 720K 3.5"
disks to load it. Don't know how well 3B2 hardware would like this mod.
I do have the proper DSDD media to use, so that's not an issue. I'd probably write
the disk out with "dd" on Linux or xBSD if possble, as the network support makes
getting the image to the writing machine much easier.
Anyone been in this position before?