On 3/30/23 10:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

> The drives in many IBM PS/2 machines don't seem to have a media sensor,
> so they can't tell the difference between "720K" and "1.4M" disks.
> "720K" is about 600 Oersted, and "1.4M" is about 750 Oersted, so they
> are close enough that sometimes one can get away with using the wrong one.

Those PS/2 drives often have peculiar IBM-specific interfaces.  For
example, some are 40 pin instead of 34.  Or power is shared on the same
cable as signals, etc.

You're not likely to consider them.


> There once existed single sided drives. Such as the original Shugart
> SA300 They were used in early Gavilans, but were replaceable with double
> sided, especially the SA350, which could use the Gavilan's custom SA300
> bezel,
> 
> Epson Geneva PX8 was 40 cylinders, intead of 80, with 67.5tpi, instead 
> of the usual 135tpi.>
> The original Sony FULL height drives were at 600RPM, and had a different
> interface.
> 
> The Tandy Portable Disk Drive, for the model 100, was weird and a half.

But none of those are high-density drives.

I'll add one of the issues may be drive-select setting for non-PC
devices. It's easy enough to get around, however.

--Chuck

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