8" Floppies

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Sat Sep 1 13:37:28 2001

>Tony Duell wrote:

> You might be thinking of the RX50 dual 5.25" drive. This is a
> single-sided unit which takes 2 separate floppy disks. They rotate in
> opposite directions (due to a belt that runs over both sides of the
> chassis) but as the lower disk is inserted label side down, in fact each
> disk rotates the 'standard' way and can be read/written on other machines
> without problems.

Jerome Fine replies:

But as far as the head is concerned, the direction of rotation is the same
on a relative basis - which is why a floppy written in the top drive
can still be read in the bottom drive.

Actually, I think the best use for an RX50 drive is what my grandson
did one day - took a VERY LARGE SLEDGE HAMMER and ...

Other than a CPU, DEC never seemed to manage to make decent
hardware the first time around. Even the software had bugs that
were really dumb. Of course, compared with M$, DEC software
was Platinum compared to Tin (is there anything less than tin?).
[But since DEC was bought in 1996?, that is OT]

> I've never seen a floppy drive that reverses the direction of the spindle
> rotation when side 1 is selected.

Actually, just for fun, one day I punched the extra holes into an RX50
floppy, turned it over (did a Low Level Format in a different drive)
and ran it as a flippy - I still have a couple that I use for demos.

So instead of reversing the direction of the spindle, I reversed the
direction of the media (Grin>).

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Sat Sep 01 2001 - 13:37:28 BST