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

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Tue Mar 19 14:33:58 2002

At 07:24 PM 3/19/02 +0000, Tony wrote:
>> > For me it's easier to get the
>> > CORRECT drive and media than it is to cobble something up that may or may
>> > not work or be reliable!
>>
>> FINALLY -- the voice of reason regarding the "will this media work in that
>> drive" questions. Match the drive and the media and avoid a hassle and a
>> lot of lost data.
>
>But why go and buy another drive

  Buy? Who said anything about buying??? I can get all the drives that I
want for next to nothing. If I do pay for a PC, it's only about $1 each.
FWIW The REAL QD 80 track drives and disks are starting to become scarce
so I've started picking them up when I find them.


and go through the effort of cabling it
>up and setting the jumpers correctly (for which you first have to find
>documentation on the jumpers)

   I have docs for the Mitsubishi 4853 (that's what I use).

> when you've already got a drive installed

   I have an old PC that I picked up from a trash pile that I use for disk
copying/transfers/etc. I've installed a CompatiCard and about six different
drives in. (Total cost so far: $4.00 for the CompatiCard) I haven't put an
80 track (80 cylinder!) drive in it yet since I haven't needed one but I've
got two perfectly fine 4853s laying here and looking for a cause.

>that _will_ write DSQD disks perfectly well.

   That hasn't been my experience. Most of the times that I use a 1.2M
drive to read/write other formats, it fails. Even when it doesn't fail the
copies don't hold up well. I could NEVER read my SB 180 disks (QD) in a 1.2
Mb drive. In fact, I finally pulled the 1.2 Mb drive out of my main PC and
put a 360k drive back into it since the 5 1/4" drive was used almost
entirely for reading/writing old disks.

   Joe
Received on Tue Mar 19 2002 - 14:33:58 GMT

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