Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 16:02:15 -0500 (CDT) From: Jerry Dunham <jdunham@fc.net> To: dkelly@fly.HiWAAY.net (David Kelly) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 8" Floppy drive? Message-ID: <199709162102.QAA09758@freeside.fc.net> In-Reply-To: <199709161522.KAA26984@fly.HiWAAY.net> from David Kelly at "Sep 16, 97 10:22:50 am"
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David Kelly babbled: > Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 10:22:50 -0500 (CDT) > From: David Kelly <dkelly@fly.HiWAAY.net> > At the very least this should be good for a laugh, but the boss dug up > about 50 8" floppies and wants the data off of them and onto modern > media. From way back, I recal the 1.2M floppy hardware interface wasn't > terribly different from the 8". Where both 8" and 1.2M disks turn > 360 RPM vs 300 RPM for 360k disks. Maybe there is a chance an 8" drive > can be attached to my FreeBSD system? > > I actually have a couple of 8" drives. > > Would be interested in any suggestions, FreeBSD related or not. > Meanwhile I've got a lead on a Xerox 820 with CP/M that may be able > to read these disks. Who knows what format they are in! May find > a hard-sectored system but have soft-sectored floppies. Rats. I wish I could help, since I used to design these critters (the drives, not the diskettes) some 15-20 years ago, but alas, I'm but the mechanical guy and know next to nothing of the interfaces and electron pathways. I do know that there were MANY different ways to interface to these drives back then, standardization not being what we've come to expect today. If they weren't written on a CP/M system they could be ANYthing. The drives I designed were used in Trash 80 and Datapoint systems and the formatting was NOT compatible with CP/M. I hope you get lucky. -- Jerry Dunham GS650G Atarian ordinaire jdunham@fc.net (512)335-0674 (H) jdunham@awesome-f0.us.dell.com (512)728-4026 (O) E Pluribus Unix
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