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External floppy drive

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Reply 40 of 58, by cyclone3d

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Should be able to. I've never had any troubles with 720k disks in 1.44MB drives. I've never owned a 720k 3.5" drive though.

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Reply 41 of 58, by Horun

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-13, 02:45:

Should be able to. I've never had any troubles with 720k disks in 1.44MB drives. I've never owned a 720k 3.5" drive though.

Really ? Had a few old IBM's that had 720k and 360k drives. Hated the stupid blue eject button on the IBM's 720k's.

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. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 42 of 58, by cyclone3d

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Horun wrote on 2020-02-13, 04:28:
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-13, 02:45:

Should be able to. I've never had any troubles with 720k disks in 1.44MB drives. I've never owned a 720k 3.5" drive though.

Really ? Had a few old IBM's that had 720k and 360k drives. Hated the stupid blue eject button on the IBM's 720k's.

First computer my family had was a white box 386sx-25. Had 5.25" 1.2MB and 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drives. I never even tried to get a 720k 3.5" drive. Might have had one pass through my hands at one point but not really sure.

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Reply 43 of 58, by Horun

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-13, 04:44:

First computer my family had was a white box 386sx-25. Had 5.25" 1.2MB and 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drives. I never even tried to get a 720k 3.5" drive. Might have had one pass through my hands at one point but not really sure.

You didn't miss much as the XT's and early 286 with DD drives were a PIA imho. Along with MFM and RLL drives...

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. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 45 of 58, by cyclone3d

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Horun wrote on 2020-02-13, 05:00:
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-13, 04:44:

First computer my family had was a white box 386sx-25. Had 5.25" 1.2MB and 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drives. I never even tried to get a 720k 3.5" drive. Might have had one pass through my hands at one point but not really sure.

You didn't miss much as the XT's and early 286 with DD drives were a PIA imho. Along with MFM and RLL drives...

Heh. I've got parts and plans to build some XT and 286 machines.

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Reply 46 of 58, by pewpewpew

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Horun wrote on 2020-02-13, 04:28:

Really ? Had a few old IBM's that had 720k and 360k drives. Hated the stupid blue eject button on the IBM's 720k's.

This style? This one's a RS/6000 which /maybe/ shares some hardware with PS/2. That's something I still need to look into.

[GAH! bloody images broken in a new way today. Let me post then try to add with an Edit...

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Reply 47 of 58, by Horun

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-13, 06:35:
Horun wrote on 2020-02-13, 05:00:

You didn't miss much as the XT's and early 286 with DD drives were a PIA imho. Along with MFM and RLL drives...

Heh. I've got parts and plans to build some XT and 286 machines.

HD 5.25" floppies introduced 1984 by IBM and HD 3.5" in 1987 also by IBM. So for any XT, 286 or 386 from 1988 up having a HD floppy drive is actually period correct though many 1985-86 XT's and 286 were still sold with DD floppy drives.

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. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 49 of 58, by Horun

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Planet-Dune wrote on 2020-02-13, 21:39:
Errius wrote on 2020-02-13, 05:18:

The Amiga uses these drives, right? Can you just drop Amiga drives into PCs and have them work? (And vice-versa)

You learn something new every day..

Yes and no. Amiga's use same drive types as PC but the jumpers on a floppy drive for PC are set different than for Amiga. The Drive Select, Disk Change and Ready jumpers as well as any speed change jumpers will be different between the two.

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. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 50 of 58, by jtchip

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Errius wrote on 2020-02-13, 02:35:

I don't own any 720 KB 3.5" drives. Do these have the same compatibility problems with 1.44 MB 3.5" drives that 360 KB 5.25" drives have with 1.2 MB 5.25" drives?

Can you write 720 KB disks in 1.44 MB drives and read them without errors in 720 KB drives?

To add to the other replies, no and yes. The problem with those 5.25" formats is the track width where 1.2MB has 80 tracks while 360KB only has 40 tracks so a 1.2MB drive writes narrower tracks, even when writing 40-track 360KB, which then leads to problems on a real 360KB drive which is expecting wider tracks. For 3.5", both 720KB and 1.44MB have 80 tracks and only differ by the number of sectors per track (9 and 18, respectively). I have written to 720KB 3.5" floppies on a PC 1.44MB drive and read them back without problems on the built-in 720KB drive in an Atari STE (which also uses FAT).

Reply 51 of 58, by cyclone3d

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You would think that the 1.2MB drives would have been made to properly support 360k disks. Could a 1.2MB drive just move the head twice as far or are the heads physically different... the 360k drive having a wider head?

What happens if you set a 1.2MB drive to 360k in the BIOS?

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Reply 52 of 58, by Horun

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-14, 01:30:

You would think that the 1.2MB drives would have been made to properly support 360k disks. Could a 1.2MB drive just move the head twice as far or are the heads physically different... the 360k drive having a wider head?

What happens if you set a 1.2MB drive to 360k in the BIOS?

Yes the 360k have a wider read/write portion of the head. 1.2Mb drives can read true 360k disks written from a 360k drive easily. In general the reading/writing part of the 1.2mb heads is 1/2 as wide and more sensitive compared to those of 360k drives. So when a 1.2mb writes tracks at 360k format it is like a pencil line compared to a felt pen line of a 360k drive head, makes it harder for them to read specially on older worn out 360k drives.
Setting the drive wrong in BIOS will cause errors, either drive not ready, seek error, drive mismatch, etc

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. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 53 of 58, by 1ST1

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Errius wrote on 2020-02-13, 05:18:

The Amiga uses these drives, right? Can you just drop Amiga drives into PCs and have them work? (And vice-versa)

No, they need modification. They have different behaviour regarding the drive select signal.

On PC, drive select is active, when signal is low. When signal is high, the drive is unselected.

On Amiga a short impulse on drive select is enough to select it until unselected by next short low implulse.

Reply 54 of 58, by SirNickity

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-14, 01:30:

You would think that the 1.2MB drives would have been made to properly support 360k disks. Could a 1.2MB drive just move the head twice as far or are the heads physically different... the 360k drive having a wider head?

I've wondered if this could have been done with clever use of a second element on the head. (Maybe two small outer elements, since the HD element would have to be centered in between.) Odd that, if it was possible, it wasn't ever done during the transition period from DD to HD.

Reply 55 of 58, by Errius

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I think HD drives were introduced with the PC/AT? I'm sure IBM's "solution" to this problem was to advise clients to just upgrade their PCs and PC/XTs. No old computers, no compatibility problems.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 57 of 58, by kleung21

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Hi there, Recently found an ibm thinkpad 3.5" external floppy+ parallel connector

(IBM Thinkpad 3.5" 1.44MB (08K9606 & 08K9578) internal floppy drives)

I've thrown this question out on 2 other threads (apologize for duplicate) but in case anyone is getting notifications.

Any thoughts on whether this parallel port floppy drive solution would work with other laptops (specifically 486 class Complaq LTE Elites - 4/75cx per se). My apologies for reviving an old thread and will delete the other bumps if there is a reply in one.

Adding to knowledge base

Reply 58 of 58, by Tetrium

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-05, 20:44:

There were external Parallel port floppy drives.

I have a couple of the 3.5" ones made by Microsolutions. The great thing about them is that not only do they support 5.25" drives, the controller supports 2 drives so you can hook up whatever combination or floppy drives you want.
http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/transfer/35_i … _inch_drive.htm

I have several of these as well. Can confirm that these will work with 2.88MB floppy drives which is kinda why I got them in the first place 😜
They should be compatible with 5.25in floppy drives (except for the housing of course xD 😜) but I never tried this.

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