8 Feb
2009
8 Feb
'09
6:43 p.m.
On 8 Feb 2009 at 18:23, Fred Cisin wrote:
I've heard of, but never used a 3.5" digital
alignment disk.
The 3.25" alignment diskettes that I had were all analog, and a bunch had
been reformatted.
I've got a 3.5" as part of Landmark "Align-It"; basically a sector-
this-way-or-that-way disk that uses software to tell you which way to
go.
I do have the Dysan 5.25" 48 tpi and 8" analog disks. Sadly, I'm
missing a 5.25" 100 tpi one.
If you could make those alignment changes realtime
under software control,
then that would be one helluva tool for recovering data from damaged
and/or misaligned diskettes!
We did this with a 5.25" Micropolis drive mounted on a slab of
aluminum with the (leadscrew) positioner driven through a 100:1
precision reduction gearbox. Took about 3 minutes to get from track
0 to track 76.
I don't see why that couldn't be done today.
Cheers,
Chuck