8 inch floppies

[Fred Cisin]

>>>> https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-33-8-034-Floppy-Disks-/184071352445
>> Some are labeled "MRX", "CP/M", "Isis", "Chip-?","PROM?", I do not 
>> see any that are labeled "Terak", "UCSD", or "Pascal"
>> At least some of them say, "single-sided, soft-sectored double 
>> density", some say "double sided", so they would physically work in

On Fri, 13 Dec 2019, Dave Mabry wrote:
> There are three that appear to be Intel MDS diskettes.  The ones 
> marked ISIS V4.3 is, as I remember, the last version of ISIS-II that 
> Intel released.  ASM51 and RL51 appear to be assembler and relocater 
> for the 8051 series of microcontroller.  And ICE51 was the in-circuit 
> emulator software for the 8051 series as well.  None of the other 
> labels mean anything to me, but those three are likely for the Intel 
> Development System.  Those systems could have single-sided, 
> single-density FM drives, and/or single-sided double-density M2FM.
>
> The Intel MDS could, of course, run CP/M-80.  So many of those other 
> diskettes could have CP/M software/files and still be used on the 
> Intel MDS.

Some are labeled double sided.  Unless the user punched additional jacket 
holes (many of us did), the double sided disks would not have been usable 
in a single sided drive.  (Unlike 5.25" disks, 8" disks had index hole in 
different location)
I never had one, but I have heard that there were drives with two sets of 
index sensors that could use both.

So, they might be from more than one system.

Unless Dave Barto has some insider information about this group of disks, 
I don't see anything to support the contention that they are Terak UCSD 
Pascal.  Although, if reformatted, they certainly could be usable.


The content?  It certainly is not inconsistent with system(s) being used 
in some hardware development.

Since none of them are commercial release disks, they may contain personal 
content or personal unreleased projects, raising some issues of the ethics 
of releasing the content publicly.  (ethics, not legality, for trade 
secret information that was acquired accidentally)