3 Jun
2004
3 Jun
'04
10:11 a.m.
On Thu, 2004-06-03 at 10:39, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
density that is related to the position of the index
hole. My
understanding is that unlike the 5-1/4 disks, the 8 in. media
is the same for the single and double density, just higher
quality. In fact, I punch a new index window in some of my
double density 8 inch floppies and I've been using them, with
no troubles, as single density.
In the day quality and specs were such that it was foolish to use the
wrong media. Today you can pull that stuff. Using DD as SD should be OK,
but the converse will work "most" of the time, which is useless unless
you're just playing.
We used to pay $80 for a box of DSDD Dysan 8" floppies and align the
disk drives every year with a Dysan alignment diskette and an
oscilloscope. That's what it took for repeatable reliability. It sucked.
Process control is down pat these days. You can safely assume the
cheapest 5% tolerance resistors are very close to 1%; I assume Yaseo
makes only one kind of resistor ("1%") and the nifty machine sorts based
upon tolerance or the desired fraction of production is diverted for 1%
labelling or somesuch. It'd be hard to believe other things with graded
performance aren't handled the same way (not that you can buy "single
density" media any more!)