8" disk drive questions...

[Mike Katz]

I'm not as familiar with 8" drives but in the 5.25" drives there were 
small punches you could buy that were designed to punch an additional 
index hole so single sided floppies could be used as flippies.

I think it was Wangco that made a single sided drive that had dual write 
protect and dual index sensors so that you just turn the disk over 
rather than punching a hole.

There were also some problems spinning cheaper floppies in the "wrong" 
direction when they were flipped.

On 11/1/2021 10:24 AM, mike via cctalk wrote:
> I use a few Shugart 8" single sided drives on my cp/m 2.2 machine. How do
> you make 'flippies'?
>
> Mike Zahorik
> (414) 254-6768
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis
> via cctalk
> Sent: Monday, November 01, 2021 12:34 AM
> To: Ali via cctalk
> Subject: Re: 8" disk drive questions...
>
> On 10/31/21 10:07 PM, Ali via cctalk wrote:
>
>> "Computers that used the floppy index hole also required two additional
>> openings in the floppy case to allow the drive to access when the disk was
>> upside down. However, it was a difficult and risky operation for the
>> integrity of the support. To facilitate this intervention, there were
> "guide
>> masks" which allowed to accurately trace the position where the hole was
> to
>> be made. These tools included the "Berkeley Microcomputer Flip-Jig" which
>> was available for both 8 "and 5" 1/4 discs."
> Interesting.   When I was using 8" disks early on, the only ones
> available were single-sided.   However, several manufacturers produced
> "flippies' with labels on both sides.   I still have several such
> examples in my stash.
>
> You'd think that a simple cardboard template would serve to allow users
> to mark additional hole locations, however.
>
> --Chuck
>