31 Oct
2006
31 Oct
'06
10 p.m.
Subject: A question regarding floppy drives functionality..
From: Marian Capel <marian.capel at bluewin.ch>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:26:22 +0100
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Since this list has a number of people that are very knowledgable on the
subject :
Am i correct in thinking that, given a custom FDC, i could run a modern
1.44 floppy in FM mode, and at much lower data rates i.e. (say 50 KHz.) ?
You may not be able to run that slow but you could test by recording square
waves of varying frequencies and look at what comes back.
Background : I am musing on how to give a small amount
of storage, say
around 100kb, to a very small low tech cpu.
I do not care about speed and efficiency.
Myself for 100k I'd use a EEprom. Eprom or even 128k ram with a battery.
I am aware that IDE-based solutions are simpler, both
hard- and software
wise, but I would prefer a floppy based solution.
FYI the slowest floppies are the oldest 5.25 like the SA400 and TM100
as they will reach down to 64khz, I did some testing once. I'd suspect
some of the later 360k drives would do well (slow data) too. I do
know that most of the 360k drives work fine at FM (single density) data
rates (125khz).
Allison