RX01 Floppies

Thank you for the extra information. I have NEVER used any IBM hardware with 8" floppy media, only DEC hardware almost all the time. For one project in the 1980s, I used a Motorola system that had an 8" SSSD floppy media. That system could perform a Low Level Format (LLF) of the floppy - if I remember correctly. One point to mention (or clarify) is that for DEC, the FORMAT operation did NOT include writing the file structure. For the PC, the FORMAT command does BOTH an LLF as well as writing an initial root file structure (FAT16??) on the floppy media. But for DEC hardware with both the RX01 and the RX02, writing the file structure made use of the INITIALIZE command (at least under RT-11 and something similar under RSTS/E and RSX-11). So with DEC PDP-11 operating systems which used 8" floppy media, the user understood very clearly the difference between the FORMAT and INITIALIZE commands and what each one did. Jerome Fine