23 Mar
2010
23 Mar
'10
7:28 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Gene Buckle <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:
How are you going to handle the data rate difference?
If memory serves,
using 1.44MB media results in a higher RPM and a higher data rate.
I'm arriving late to the conversation, so maybe I missed something. High
density floppies have a square hole opposite the right protect tab up in the
corner. Most 3.5" floppy drives have a switch that detects this hole and
does (here's my hardware knowledge black hole) something different with the
media. 720k double density floppies don't have this hole.
So you should be able to simply cover the holes with tape or disable the
switch the right way and the drive will treat the media like a double
density disk.
From what I remember, there's issues with this
though. First, the
read/write head is thinner which I believe causes problems when
you put that
disk back into a real double density drive and one of the drives is slightly
misaligned. Also, I think the actual media may be different, as in
different magnetic properties.
There's my highly technical explanation of making HD disks work like DD
disks. :-P
brian