2.4Mb 5 1/4" floppy drive?

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Tue Sep 24 17:41:00 2002

On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, Joe wrote:
> No it's looks like just a single stepper motor. I found a diskette
> in one of htem. It appears to be a standard disk. More about that in
> reponse to Will's message.

Assuming that it is a formatted, used diskette for that drive, (not just
any-old diskette being used as a shipping head protector), then several
things can be determined from it.

What COLOR is the media? 360K and 1.2M (300 oerstedt v 600 oerstedt) are
slightly different colors. 1.4M floppies v 2.8M (Barium Ferrite) are
different colors.

If the diskette is the same material as a 1.2M, then the 2.4M was probably
achieved by going to 192 TPI, instead of 96 TPI, since that would use the
same oerstedt media as 1.2M.

OTOH, if it is a Barium Ferrite media, then it is probably still 96 TPI,
but with twice the linear density on each track of a 1.2M. That would
require a different media.


Try write protecting the diskette and put it into a DOS machine.
(the error messages from Windoze will hide all useful information)


If it is readable (both DIRectory and files, then it is NOT a 2.4M
diskette

If part of the DIRectory is readable, but file access produces SECTOR NOT
FOUND, or GENERAL FAILURE, or if you ever get SECTOR NOT FOUND, or SEEK
ERROR. then it is almost certainly 192 TPI.

If NOTHING is readable and produces General Failure (even first sectors of
DIRectory - try "ignore"), then it could be either.

--
Fred Cisin                      cisin_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft                        http://www.xenosoft.com
Received on Tue Sep 24 2002 - 17:41:00 BST

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