3-1/2" Floppy Market Cornered

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu May 22 16:35:01 2003

[3" disks]

> But, IIRC, the double sided drives would not let you insert a diskette
> upside down, and therefore were incapable of reading the second side of a

Yes. There's an off-centre notch in the front edge of the disk. On the
double-head drive, there's a metal bracket that slots into this notch
which prevents the disk going in if upside-down.

The better class of single-head drive have an optical sensor to detect
this notch. The In-Use LED is green if the disk is in one way up, and red
if it's the other way up. Or at least the one in my Einstein behaves like
that,

> flippy other than backwards, which was not supported by the controllers.

True :-(

-tony
Received on Thu May 22 2003 - 16:35:01 BST