Jerome Fine replies: But that was true for hard drives as well. I remember the story about a Seagate hard drive - 20 MByte vs 40 MByte - I believe was how the story went. The 20 MByte drive had a bolt in the actuator arm (or something like that) to prevent use of the extra cylinders. The 40 BMyte drive did not. That is a case of not supplying as much hardware (one bolt) and charging more. The 8" flippy (SS diskette) was the same way. You could insert the floppy upside down to use the media on the other side. Very useful for distribution or seldom used backup - I was told that turning the diskette in the other direction tended to dislodge the dirt in the jacket. You supply less of the jacket (2 extra holes) and charge more. I once used a DSD 880/30 as my primary drive (3 * RL02 of 10 MBytes each on an 8" fixed hard drive) plus a single 8" double-sided floppy drive (an RX03 or an RX02 if being used as a single-sided drive). Since the double-sided RX03 was just there to be used, I resorted to punching holes at first. Finally, I thought it would be worth while to try putting a double pole/double throw switch into the detection circuit. In one position, the drive was normal. In the other position, the drive used the opposite pair of holes as normal. I never used a double-sided floppy as a single-sided media, but IT WAS GREAT NOT HAVING TO PUNCH HOLES IN THE SINGLE-SIDED MEDIA AND STILL USING THEM AS DOUBLE-SIDED. I still remember the feeling the first time I was successful after installing the switch and not knowing if it would work. By the way, all the media could be used and read and written as single-sided regardless of how the media was formatted and written in the first place. The location of the holes did not seem to matter at all from the timing point of view. AND THE PRICE!! EXCEPT, there were about 4000 * 8" media that I tried to FORMAT on the DSD hardware (NEVER could format on an actual DEC RX02 of course - DEC always charged about 5 to 10 times the price of unformatted media) as double-sided. Of all the media I tried, the only ones I can remember that would not format (just a small percentage - about 5% which I had received from a company that had tossed the DEC distribution 8" RX02 floppy media - I know Megan - I formatted the RSX-11 software off the media and never used the programs - I even peeled off the DEC labels that identified the software) double-sided were DEC labelled 8" floppy diskettes. So while EVERY other media labelled as single-sided was able to be formatted as double-sided, did DEC actually pay more for media that were unlikely to be OK as double-sided? I know some of the pro-DEC people who participate in this group will say that since the media were specified as being single-sided, I should not even have attempted to try them as double-sided. But then why did every other 8" single-sided floppy that I ever tried format as double-sided without any problem? Tis a puzzle!! Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine