Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
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Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
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Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#2Embarrassed to be old enough to remember: 8" floppies were actually called disks, and the smaller 5.25" floppy drives were called diskettes because they were so compact
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#3I had four 8" drives. Two (DSDD) were connected to my IMSAI (modified with CompuPro S-100 boards). The other two (SSDD) were connected to my Ferguson Big Board. I never tried using the 8" drives on systems that would normally interface to 5-1/4" drives, but I always assumed it would be a simple matter of adapting the 50-pin edge connector used for the 8" drives to the 34-pin edge connecter used for the 5-1/4" drives.
At one time I had a calibration disk and an "exerciser board" for 8" drives that could be used (along with an oscilloscope) to adjust the track positions and gain settings on the drive.
I gave away all of those old goodies after I purchased at 25MHz 386 PC clone that could emulate CP/M faster than the native Z-80 hardware.
It was fun tinkering with computer hardware in that era, but it was also frustrating because of the limitations of the technology. It's hard to believe that processors of today run three orders of magnitude faster, and have six+ orders of magnitude more RAM, with six orders of magnitude more disk storage with about five orders of magnitude faster disk I/O.
I don't miss the old days so much.
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#4I seriously got into computing in 1979, working for the Microbiology Department at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, using Research Machines 380Zs, equipped with both 8 and 5.25 inch floppy drives. Here are a few of my observations on the beasts:
- They required quite a lot of strength to open and particularly to close - some of our students were scared they were going to break them (and the cost a lot back then) because of the force needed.
- One student did the classic "remove disk from envelope" thing where they took the actual mylar disc out of the floppy container. He may have been taking the piss, but if so he lost out, as we made students pay for the disks.
- Somewhat unrelated - when I was working in the Netherlands in the 90s, I noticed that supermarkets in Utrecht, a big university town, had floppy disk dispensers in supermarkets - students put in a guilder or whatever, and got a 3.5 inch floppy they could submit their coursework on.
- They were incredibly noisy - the servos were banging away like mad, particularly if you were doing anything database-like, which I mostly was.
- They were horribly unreliable - we used to have to keep sending ours back to RML in Oxford to get them recalibrated or replaced every few months.
Still, all in all they were a million times better than my own personal computer at the time - a Dragon32 with a cassette deck for storage!
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#5Embarrassed to be old enough to remember: 8" floppies were actually called disks, and the smaller 5.25" floppy drives were called diskettes because they were so compact
In Dutch, we always talked about 'diskettes', when talking about the rigid 3.5" disks. The large 5.25" were called floppies. Diskettes were called floppies too sometimes, but never the other way around.
I'm from the time frame in which I never saw 8 inch floppies.
The 5.25" were on the way out, many PCs had both 1.44 and 1.2 MB drives for a while.
/rambling
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#6Embarrassed to be old enough to remember: 8" floppies were actually called disks, and the smaller 5.25" floppy drives were called diskettes because they were so compact
I'm also old enough, and we called both 8 and 5.25 disks, disks. Diskettes came around later, and that nomenclature was far from universal.
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#7Embarrassed to be old enough to remember: 8" floppies were actually called disks, and the smaller 5.25" floppy drives were called diskettes because they were so compact
In Dutch, we always talked about 'diskettes', when talking about the rigid 3.5" disks. The large 5.25" were called floppies. Diskettes were called floppies too sometimes, but never the other way around. I'm from the time frame in which I never saw 8 inch floppies. The 5.25" were on the way out, many PCs had both 1.44 and 1.2 MB drives for a while. /rambling
It was/is the same rule in English also. Cheers.
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#8I seriously got into computing in 1979, working for the Microbiology Department at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, using Research Machines 380Zs, equipped with both 8 and 5.25 inch floppy drives. Here are a few of my observations on the beasts: - They required quite a lot of strength to open and particularly to close - some of our students were scared they were going to break them (and the cost a lot b…
> They were incredibly noisy - the servos were banging away like mad, particularly if you were doing anything database-like, which I mostly was.
heck, even my 5.25" c64 drive was so noisy from knocking its head that I kept the cover unscrewed to realign it on a regular basis. especially after trying to use "copy protected" disks that causes even more knocking.
I was also confused when 3.5" floppies came out and were stiff, and people started talking more about "hard disks".
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#9Embarrassed to be old enough to remember: 8" floppies were actually called disks, and the smaller 5.25" floppy drives were called diskettes because they were so compact
I'm also old enough, and we called both 8 and 5.25 disks, disks. Diskettes came around later, and that nomenclature was far from universal.
My elementary school had 5.25" disks, but 8" was before my time (and really, 5.25" almost is).
3.5" disks were called "disks", but occasionally something would refer to them as diskettes. Diskette was not a normal word for any context.
Re: Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC
#10A few years ago I was looking at purchasing an IBM DisplayWriter from someone. I had a handful of devices with 5.25” drives but have never an 8” drive in person until then.
Unfortunately the machine was not in a working state. There was some suspicion that it was a simple issue, but I’m not an EE and I try to make sure my retro equipment works prior to buying it. Since the system wouldn’t boot, I was unsure whether the drives were even working. I ended up not buying it in part because of this and in part because I was moving soon, but I kinda regret not doing so, seeing how rare full DsiplayWriter systems are and how much a complete system will sell for (a lot more than I was going to pay for it).
At the time I had done a small amount of research on using the disk drives with a PC. I was mostly inconclusive with me finding maybe one person selling boards to adapt 8” drives. So it’s cool to see something like this now.