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From: Jerry Dunham <jdunham@fc.net>
Message-Id: <199709162102.QAA09758@freeside.fc.net>
Subject: Re: 8" Floppy drive?
In-Reply-To: <199709161522.KAA26984@fly.HiWAAY.net> from David Kelly at "Sep 16, 97 10:22:50 am"
To: dkelly@fly.HiWAAY.net (David Kelly)
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 16:02:15 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
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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