What are you filling a Monster FDC with? \ VOGONS

What are you filling a Monster FDC with?

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First post, by dumpsterac1d

Posted on 2025-05-05, 13:25

dumpsterac1d Offline

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Initially got this because I wanted 4 drives (2x 5.25 drives, 1x 3.5 drive and a Gotek) and space to grow, but now I'm wondering what to do with the extra FDC onboard. Haven't set this up yet, and seeing as most of the jumpers and BIOS settings deal with that additional interface, wondering if I should hold on that for now. Was looking forward to jamming more obscure formats in there so long as they were useful, but the ones I'm interested in are all ATAPI (LS120, the iomega stuff).

Any ideas for what else to get? Already going for another 3.5 to let me copy disks easier, but unless there's another good format to use, I'm going to leave the second one disabled.

Reply 1 of 4, by chinny22

Posted on 2025-05-06, 01:15

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Unless your wanting to create disks for other non dos systems like Amiga's, etc I can only think of the following 5 options.

5¼ 360KB
5¼ 1.2MB

3½ 720KB
3½ 1.44MB

Gotek

Lower capacity drives can be useful for disk imaging certain games with copy protection. (I forget which games, none are in my library)

Reply 2 of 4, by Horun

Posted on 2025-05-06, 01:26

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Yep, If you mess with very old floppies: having both a 360k and a 1.2Mb drive are very essential. Otherwise not really.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 4, by maxtherabbit

Posted on 2025-05-06, 02:29

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You're not really retro computing until you have an 8" floppy

Reply 4 of 4, by Jo22

Posted on 2025-05-06, 03:00

Jo22 Offline

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Hi, there also was 3,5" with 360KB (SD)..

"The rare 3.5" SD disks nominally have 40 tracks with 9 sectors each at a track density of 67.5 tpi,
which corresponds to a capacity of 360 KB (two-sided)."
Translated, source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Density

Also interesting is 3" format, as being used by Amstrad PCW and CPC.
They're Shugart compatible and can be used on DOS, I think. With some tinkering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW#Mod … ls_and_features

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