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

From: Geoff Reed <geoffr_at_zipcon.net>
Date: Tue Mar 19 00:57:29 2002

At 01:11 AM 3/19/02 +0000, you wrote:
> > I recommended that you try and find a QD drive but several people have
> > correctly (and vigorously!) pointed out that a 1.2Mb drive does use 80
> > tracks and that you COULD use one of them. (once you over come the possible
> > double stepping and write-strength pin select problems!) The problem is
> > that they use a different magnetic field strength and I've had that led to
>
>That's what the density-select pin is for. In one state (deasseted?), the
>write current is correct for standard DD media (360K disks, etc).
>
>There really should be no compatibility problems reading/writing 80
>cylinder [1] DD disks in a 1.2Mbyte drive, provided you use it correctly.


There isn't. also, there is no problem with writing 80 cylinder single
sided disks in them (dec rainbow format) the HD drives step down to the
lower write strength when told to by software, be it RainDOS (the driver to
make a 1.2 MB Disk drive on an IBM compatible write dec rainbow disks or
commercial products to do media translation
Received on Tue Mar 19 2002 - 00:57:29 GMT