Five and quarter drives

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri Feb 11 17:55:05 2005

> > Can someone refresh my memory please whether it was possible to visually
> > tell 360K and 1.2MB 5 1/4 inch floppy drives apart (the drive that is,
> > not the media).
>
> Unless I'm quite mistaken, the 1.2M drives have two r/w heads - one
> for each side of the media, whereas the 360K have only one. > --

You are mistaken, at least for normal PC drives. The 360K one is a 40
cylinder double-head device. It's possible to make a single-head 360K
drive -- it would have 80 cylinders. In fact the DEC RX50 is one such,
but those drives are not common on PCs

-tony
Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 17:55:05 GMT