Hello George & Jesse, Replacing a DD 180/360K 5.25" drive with a 3.5" drive is straightforward, aside from the different power and data cables and the physical size of course, but in case there's any confusion, the format is NOT compatible with a TPDD.
Two 'combo' drives as shown would require a switch and some mods to select two drives out of the possible four. No, there is no advantage per se to using 3.5" diskettes since the controller would still only access the normal 180KB, and of course the possible disadvantage is incompatibility with any other DVI. Those pictures go back to a discussion many years ago about what kind of drives you could actually use in a DVI, so they were more proof of concept than practical mods; some people do prefer 3.5" diskettes though and/or have suitable drives on hand (or did back then ;-). Most (but not all) 1.4M HD 3.5" drives will work just fine as 740K DD drives. Regarding the 5.25" DVI drives (and the TPDD drives discussed elsewhere) a double-sided drive and/or diskette will work just fine in place of a single-sided one, although of course only one side will be used (unless you add a switch to select the side). As to density, there is much more difference between low (double) and high density 5.25" diskettes than 3.5"; using an HD 5.25" diskette instead of DD will almost certainly be unreliable at best whereas with 3.5" diskettes you can usually get away with it in a pinch if you cover the HD hole. Finally, AFAIK unlike 5.25" and 8" diskettes there are no 'hard sector' 3.5" diskettes; in fact, they don't have any index or sector hole(s) at all, the index signal being created in the motor. I suspect that when the TPDD manual refers to "hard sectored" diskettes they mean that the sectors are located by reference to the index signal, whereas some systems ignore the index and locate sectors just by reading the track and looking for specific sector headers. At least that's my take on it ;-) m ----- Original Message ----- From: Jesse Huyett To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 11:27 AM Subject: Re: [M100] DVI Hello All, George: I think your question is for Mike? I asked about using a Gotek in the DVi while he posted pictures of a single slot dual floppy drive. And Mike: Is there an advantage to having access to a 3.5" floppy? I assumed the controller would limit this to 360k. Regards On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 2:23 PM George Rimakis <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Jesse, Is there any more information accompanying those mods that are pictured? Best, ~George On Mar 16, 2019, at 1:42 PM, Mike Stein <[email protected]> wrote: ----- Original Message ----- From: Jesse Huyett To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2019 4:08 AM > Hello All, > Has anyone tried a Gotek/ HxC in the DVI? A Gotek might be a challenge but FWIW 3.5" drives work quite well. <DVI35e.JPG> With a little futzing you could have both ;-) <DVIduale.JPG>
