8" floppy formatting

From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu>
Date: Wed Mar 31 13:40:23 1999

I need to reformat a bunch of old 8" floppy disks for use on a Terak
system with single sided single density shugart drives. Terak's
cannot format floppies (well, actually I recall a program that
could format, but it required special hardware and DSDD drives on
the Terak, which I dont have).

I will attempt to format the floppies on a Cromemco Z-2 system
with DSDD drives. Assuming this even works, I'm wondering if I
should buy a tape eraser and use it on the floppies before
attempting to reformat them. I need the 'standard' SSSD format,
which I think is 26 sectors, 128 bytes/sector.

Any suggestions on the best way to proceed will be appreciated. I
need to backup the old floppy disk software I have before time or
accidents cause me to lose some of it forever.

-Lawrence LeMay
lemay_at_cs.umn.edu

PS: I'm looking into obtaining permission to distribute the software
and manuals and operating system that were developed here at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Received on Wed Mar 31 1999 - 13:40:23 BST