Early 3.5" Floppy Drives - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

13 Dec 2005

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Subject: Re: Early 3.5" Floppy Drives
   From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net>
   Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 21:08:04 -0500
     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:22:19 -0800
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

  On 12/12/2005 at 1:42 PM Fred Cisin wrote:

 Numerous machines came out with 3.5" drives
using "customized"
versions of MS-DOS 2.11.  
 ...and let's not forget a few systems came out with 5.25" 96 tpi
 drives running MS-DOS 1.25 or earlier.  These certainly would
 support 3.5" 720K drives.

 Cheers,
 Chuck

  I have heard of (but not seen) machines with 8" floppies that run
MS-DOS 1.x (not real sure what version).  I could probably
contrive my MicroMint MPX-16 to behave in that fashion if I
installed an 8" drive on it to do the conversion.  (would be
tricky getting it to support 5-1/4" and 8" simulatneously, and
maybe even impossible). 
I have MSdos on 8" unknown format but likely something native to a
Compupro DISK1A with a CPU85/88 as the engine.  I also have a two 
edition article describing what it would take to put MSDOS (V3.3!)
on a NON-PC 8088 system.

Supporting 8" is not hard you need 250 and 500khz data rates
same as 5.25 360k and 3.5" 720k formats.

Allison