8 May
2001
8 May
'01
8:52 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
[BTW, on the
Computer Bowl, nither billg nor anyone else on his team knew
where the write protect notch is on an 8" diskette!]
Did they know that
it's 'inverted' wrt the 5.25" notch -- that is to say
on an 8" disk you cover the notch to enable writing to the disk. That
makes a lot more sense IMHO -- if the tab falls off, the disk is left in
a 'safe' state (write-protected). Onm the other hand, with the 5.25" disk you can
have a permanently
write-protected disk (no notch at all), as was used for some software
distribution kits. You can't do that with the 8" disk -- it's always
possible to stick something over the notch.
Not necessarily true. At one point, I rigged an RX50 drive to think that the
"notch" was still there and was then able to write on the media. Of course,
I still had to format the media since originally it was not RX50 compatible.
At one point, I used an Emulex DM01 with a floppy drive that had a
light sensor to detect the "notch". So for the moment, I unbolted the
sensor and used a flashlight to simulate the "notch" being there.
So don't assume that those "permanently write-protected" floppies can't
have other information written on them - a bit inconvenient, but not
that much of a problem.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine