I have a DEC RX01 drive and the box of floppies that I have with it are 8 inch single sided single density. Are 8" hard sectored floppies compatible with these? Ashley -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Joe R. Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 7:29 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: 8" hard sectored floppies I can use them if they're still available. They were used in the Tektronix 8051, DG Novas (IIRC) and the Altairs with 8" drives and lot of early computers. Joe At 01:22 PM 6/2/04 -0400, you wrote: boxes of still shrink-wrapped SSSD hard sector disks. I've sold a couple boxes on epay, but action on them was lower than I'd imagined. Some folks who resell alot of 8" floppies told me "good luck" because hard sectored just don't sell. prices (don't know if they are selling at that price or not). What systems made use of these? Any that I might own or want to own some day that it'd be worth me holding on to these if I can't sell them for a price worth it to drive to the post office and ship them?

Rumor has it that Nico de Jong may have mentioned these words: Ah, never say never, my friend! ;-) I know little about 8" floppies, but I know that Apple ][ 5.25" drives (which used GCR encoding, IIRC) could use hard or soft sector floppies. It actually wrote an "index blip" (for lack of the correct term) on the disk itself during format & used that instead of any physical hole(s) in the disk. Just my $0.000000000000002, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch(a)30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in!

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote: Unfortunately, the 765 does a "reset" of the chip whenever it sees the index. It can handle NOT having an index hole (AFTER formatting), but excess holes will keep it from working. Apple (and Commodore and Atari 400 series?) did not HAVE an index sensor, therefore, they could use diskettes that were intended to be hard or soft sectored, and could do flippy diskettes if the write-protect were circumvented. OB_stupid-project: I once modified a 5.25" drive to index on the hub, instead of the photocell. Then I didn't need to punch the jacket for doing "flippy" diskettes on single sided formats. It also meant that I could flip over a hard-sectored diskette and format it. That made a diskette that could be used and its contents copied to a "normal" diskette with COPY or DISKCOPY, but COPYII-PC (including OPTION BOARD) would choke on trying to copy it. But,... the Teac 55 series drives wouldn't work with it, since they rely on seeing an index hole within a reasonable time period to beleive that the drive is "ready".