DSQD Drives (Was: RE: Diags/Boot image for Altos 580)

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Sun Mar 17 14:03:01 2002

At 12:14 PM 3/17/02 -0500, you wrote:
>> IIRC the Floppy on an Altos 580 is DSQD.
>
>Am I correct that while different from standard
>DSDD, they are *not* GCR drives?
>
>What other machines might carry these drives,

   The SB-180s used them. A lot of the later CPM and early MS-DOS (but not
necessarily IBM compatible) machines used them. For example, they were
popular additons to the Sanyo 55xs. I just found a pair of Teac 80 track
drives inside of an old Multibus system (The same one that had the GAPP
cards in it).

 can I
>hook one up to a standard PC controller in a box
>running DOS, and then duplicate the disks?

   Yes, MS-DOS can handle them. There's a DOS device driver that I can't
think of the name of but it will let you specify the number of sides,
tracks and sectors. It will handle them nicely.
  

>
>> I had one that had the CMI hard drive replaced with a Seagate ST225. So I
>> know they will take similar configured Hard Drives. I think they will take
>> 10, 15 and 20 Meg HDs.
>
>This is good to know, ST225s still pop up from time to time...

   225s and 251s are handy to keep around since they'll replace a number of
OLD hard drives. I've used 225s to replace the dries inside of some of the
HP HP-IB disk drives.

     Joe
>
>-dq
>
Received on Sun Mar 17 2002 - 14:03:01 GMT