So when I got an IBM XT (second hand, old!), imagine my confusion when I find the disks don't work when you flip them upside down. Why would the
I know for 3.5" discs, there was a small difference in the thickness of the actual disk. Higher density disks had I think a thinner magnetic coating, as it had to be more sensitive. Even DD discs written to in HD drives, could have problems if read on a DD drive subsequently. Im guessing subtle differences in the sttrenght and size of the magnetic field, and in the responsiveness of the magnetic layer made HD discs unusuable in DD drives.
I never saw them so I can't add a great deal real info on SS SD. But by
The only experience I had with SS floppies was when using a C64. IIRC,
Mostly it will 'just work'. I've absolutely written DD disks in HD
drives, then read them on DD drives just fine, plenty of times in the past.
The only experience I had with SS floppies was when using a C64. IIRC,
Single sided floppies were pretty ubiquitous for a time there.. what I have never seen is the SD portion... single density.... I was warned about purchasing SD disks when I first bought a few floppies for school. Presumably
they hold less than a DD disk does in realation to an HD floppy. But in practice although they must've been around at some point, I never saw one either in a store, or in the wild....
In the your mileage may var
category, it is generally NOT
reliable. But if you have to do
it, and expect the DD drive to read
it happily, then the best course
was to format it on the DD drive
and then write to it with the HD
drive ONCE only... It appears very
device dependent though.
Dumas Walker wrote to STORMTROOPER <=-
I don't ever remember seeing one marked SD, either, but they may have
been before my time. The first computer I got that used floppies used
the DS/DD 360k 5.25" disks.
But double sided became a better
deal since you, effectively, got 2
phigan wrote to Dr. What <=-
There were definitely single density disks, but I don't think they ever commercially sold single sided 5.25" disks.
But this one has a side that is
much duller than the other.
phigan wrote to Dr. What <=-
Interesting. Have you tried it just for kicks?
I am betting those are rare.
Quoting Phigan to Dr. What <=-
But double sided became a better
deal since you, effectively, got 2
There were definitely single density disks, but I don't think they
ever commercially sold single sided 5.25" disks.
In the your mileage may var category, it is generally NOT reliable. But if you have to do it, and expect the DD drive to read it happily, then the best course was to format it on the DD drive and then write to it with the HD drive ONCE only... It appears very device dependent though.
I hated floppy disks because they always failed on me. I had my bbs backups on them such as my user base or the wwiv 4.x code base i used to customize my system and they always corrupted :(
I've still got several including an external USB 3.5" drive. Some of
them are the 1.2M 5 1/4inch variety. Those are still my favourite disks.
I had more CDs go bad than floppies, but I wasn't exactly buying top quality CD blanks... :(
disks are kind of dying, but the 5 1/4 inch disks, mostly holding up
well, despite being 30+ years old.
Would be good if you could still buy new disks and drives, just for the thrill of it.
Got any single density 5.25" diskshey i want some!
you'd want to get rid of?
Wow... I've still got a LOT of disk
When I didn't know much about computers as a youngster, I just assumed a "double sided" disk was one you could turn over, flip and put in the
disc drive upside down and still use, as with the Commodore 64 disc
drive.
So when I got an IBM XT (second hand, old!), imagine my confusion when I find the disks don't work when you flip them upside down. Why would the Commodore 1541 be able to use both sides, and the IBM only one side?
Then when I got 1.44M you could only put them in one way, but they were marketed as double sided!
I did learn that it writes to both sides at once, but for a while, I assumed disc drives only write on the upper side.
Yep, same here. I used to use my 486 with a 1.2MB drive to write
floppies for my XT which has a 360Kb drive. It would generally work but the hit or miss errors after a while would drive me nuts.
I ended up just putting a 360kb drive in my 486 for this to avoid the HD to DD and visa versa reading/writing errors.
I did that about 20 years ago and haven't had issues since. (I actually used both of those computers tonight... though not the floppy drives.)
I did learn that it writes to both sides at once, but for a while, I
i did not know about this of ther c64 drive (i never had one)
I've still got several including an external USB 3.5" drive. Some of them are the 1.2M 5 1/4inch variety. Those are still my favourite disks.
5.25 is my favorite too! :D gang gang~
I just realised in another message I said I preferred 3.5". Maybe I don't know, but the 1.2M were kind of "exotic" as I rarely actually saw them used. I only obtained the drives and disks in the early 2000s! Before then I hadn't really used them. In the 90's they were this format which existed, but didn't get to see. Hence the mystery.
3.5 inch with dos formatbruh i ment the TYPE of disk DD or HD?
I just realised in another message I said I preferred 3.5". Maybe I13cm/5.25 HD floppies are BASED! and 286 PILLED! <3
don't know, but the 1.2M were kind of "exotic" as I rarely actually saw them used. I only obtained the drives and disks in the early 2000s! Before then I hadn't really used them. In the 90's they were this
format which existed, but didn't get to see. Hence the mystery.
My first PC was a second-hand 286 PC, which I got in 1992 from my dad.floppy gang
For floppy disks, it initially only had a 5.25" floppy drive, so I was using a lot of the 1.2MB 5.25" floppy disks for a little while. A couple years later, I was able to get a 3.5" floppy disk drive for my PC, and
at the time I thought that was a pretty cool upgrade.
Boraxman wrote to mary4 <=-
I just realised in another message I said I preferred 3.5". Maybe I
don't know, but the 1.2M were kind of "exotic" as I rarely actually saw them used.
They weren't around long as 3.5" floppies came out soon after to correct the problems that floppies, in general, had.
ex:
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones came out they added the extra hole so you could easily tell them apart.
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones
came out they added the extra hole so you could easily tell them apart.
the dd 5.25 has a hub rinmg the hd
5.25's dont! :D
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones
Boraxman wrote to mary4 <=-
I just realised in another message I said I preferred 3.5". Maybe I don't know, but the 1.2M were kind of "exotic" as I rarely actually saw them used.
They weren't around long as 3.5" floppies came out soon after to correct the problems that floppies, in general, had.
ex:
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones came out they added the extra hole so you could easily tell them apart.
Nightfox wrote to Dr. What <=-
The industry for music & home video didn't seem to care whether media looked alike.
mary4 wrote to Dr. What <=-
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones
came out they added the extra hole so you could easily tell them apart.
the dd 5.25 has a hub rinmg the hd 5.25's dont! :D
The industry for music & home video didn't seem to care whether media
looked alike.
Music and home video didn't use floppy disks.
I never noticed that before! I just pulled out one of each I have here
and took a look. Sure enough, ring on the DD disk.
Learned something new. Thanks!
Really? That's interesting. Or did the HD ones simply have a blackHd Has no ring
ring?
In any case, I never noticed that before or maybe I just don't remember.
I don't have any 5.25 1.2M floppies around anymore because I have no systems that use it. And, the real problem with those disks, writing to
a 360K disk in a 1.2M drive and vice versa was not always reliable.
Quoting Dr. What to Boraxman <=-
Boraxman wrote to mary4 <=-
I just realised in another message I said I preferred 3.5". Maybe I
don't know, but the 1.2M were kind of "exotic" as I rarely actually saw them used.
They weren't around long as 3.5" floppies came out soon after to
correct the problems that floppies, in general, had.
ex:
1.2M floppies looked identical to 360K floppies. When the 3.5" ones
came out they added the extra hole so you could easily tell them apart.
Quoting Mary4 to Dr. What <=-
Really? That's interesting. Or did the HD ones simply have a black
ring?
Hd Has no ring
In any case, I never noticed that before or maybe I just don't remember.
I don't have any 5.25 1.2M floppies around anymore because I have no systems that use it. And, the real problem with those disks, writing to
a 360K disk in a 1.2M drive and vice versa was not always reliable.
odd it works fine for me?
HD ones simply have a black DW> ring?
Hd Has no ring
3.5" floppies also came with only one hole, 720K floppies - then came
the 1.4M floppies with holes on both sides.
Quoting Stormtrooper to Cougar428 <=-
3.5" floppies also came with only one hole, 720K floppies - then came
the 1.4M floppies with holes on both sides.
Some of the floppy drives are smart enough to check the disk capacity before letting you format it. They'd either refuse to format
incorrectly or ejaculate the disk instead of trying to work with it.
Not sure if this happened in the PC world... they tended to be more maniacal.. Most of the Apple equipment of the age was more
civilised... motorised eject. But even on these in moments of
desperation you could take drill to the floppy case :P
Oh no, not one of those PC versus Mac debates with the name calling!
Nightfox wrote to Dr. What <=-
That's correct. I was talking about CDs, DVDs, blu-rays, and 4Ks,
which I specifically mentioned in my message (which you interestingly
left out of your quote above).
mary4 wrote to Dr. What <=-
In any case, I never noticed that before or maybe I just don't remember.
I don't have any 5.25 1.2M floppies around anymore because I have no systems that use it. And, the real problem with those disks, writing to
a 360K disk in a 1.2M drive and vice versa was not always reliable.
odd it works fine for me?
StormTrooper wrote to Cougar428 <=-
Some of the floppy drives are smart enough to check the disk capacity before letting you format it. They'd either refuse to format
incorrectly or ejaculate the disk instead of trying to work with it.
Not sure if this happened in the PC world...
Cougar428 wrote to STORMTROOPER <=-
Wait, did you say ejaculate the disk? You call that civilized? :))
Quoting Stormtrooper to Cougar428 <=-
Oh no, not one of those PC versus Mac debates with the name calling!
Its worse than that, its a PeeCee vs Apple II debate :P We don't need
no steenking Macs. Not sure, I thought some of the Ameagre drives
were similar...
Quoting Dr. What to Cougar428 <=-
Cougar428 wrote to STORMTROOPER <=-
Wait, did you say ejaculate the disk? You call that civilized? :))
Well, the disk was floppy. :)
If you write to a 360K disk in a 1.2M drive, it will probably still be readn
another 1.2M drive, but probably not another 360K drive.
That's correct. I was talking about CDs, DVDs, blu-rays, and 4Ks, which
I specifically mentioned in my message (which you interestingly left out
of your quote above).
Then you might want to change the title of your messages, which clearly says "floppy disks".
Dumas Walker wrote to Dr. What <=-
When I first had a 386 with a 1.2M 5.25 drive, so long as the 360K disk was formatted properly, my XT with the 360K drive could read it just
fine after the 386 wrote to it.
IIRC, there was a switch I would include on the FORMAT command if formating the 360 disk on the 386. It might have very well sensed it
on its own, but I didn't want to leave it to chance.
My understanding (and I'm really reaching back in the memory here) was that many 360K drives were not in really good alignment. Not a real big deal when reading other 360K disks, but to read a disk written to by a 1.2M drive meant that the 360K drive had to be in proper alignment or there would be issues.
IIRC, there was a switch I would include on the FORMAT command if formating the 360 disk on the 386. It might have very well sensed it
on its own, but I didn't want to leave it to chance.
I don't think it could sense, but that might be my faulty memory.
But I do remember the switch on the FORMAT command.
Hello boraxman!
** On Monday 28.04.25 - 00:12, boraxman wrote to Al:
Not me:
http://kolico.ca/fidonet/echos/win95/#diskettes
--- OpenXP 5.0.64
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointFace (21:4/106.21)
Wow... I've still got a LOT of disks, mostly 1.44M, but some 1.2M and a couple of disk boxes of 360K floppies from when I had an XT. The 1.44M disks are kind of dying, but the 5 1/4 inch disks, mostly holding up well, despite being 30+ years old.
Would be good if you could still buy new disks and drives, just for the thrill of it.
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52
--- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
On 27 Apr 2025 at 12:14a, Al pondered and said...
I've still got several including an external USB 3.5" drive. Some of them are the 1.2M 5 1/4inch variety. Those are still my favourite disks.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
Re: Re: floppy disks
By: StormTrooper to Nightfox on Mon Apr 28 2025 09:28 am
I've seen some weird things like that. One thing I noticed is that if I burned CDs on the maximum speed, they'd often read okay in my PC, but other CD-ROMs and CD players might have trouble reading it. I found that it was best to burn CDs at the slowest speed available, and that generally helped.
Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
I've seen some weird things like that. One thing I noticed is that if I
burned CDs on the maximum speed, they'd often read okay in my PC, but other
CD-ROMs and CD players might have trouble reading it. I found that it was
best to burn CDs at the slowest speed available, and that generally helped.
MyDVD PLUS is a program HP had installed on my XP box It has a setting to Finalize CD/DVD's.
Finalizeing makes the disk readable on other computers.
Would your CD's had needed Finalizing?
Ed Vance wrote to boraxman <=-
On 27 Apr 2025 at 12:14a, Al pondered and said...
I've still got several including an external USB 3.5" drive. Some of them are the 1.2M 5 1/4inch variety. Those are still my favourite disks.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
Reading that made me wonder if a 5 1/4" external USB drive was ever
made? Ed
I liked seeing Snoopy jumping up on the bottom of that kolico page.
MyDVD PLUS is a program HP had installed on my XP box
It has a setting to Finalize CD/DVD's.
Re: Re: floppy disks
By: Ed Vance to Nightfox on Wed May 14 2025 12:04 pm
I always finalized my CDs when burning them.
Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.25-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
Never saw one or found one. In doing a search now, I've seen how expensive the 5 1/4 inch drives are today!
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.49
--- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
Hello Ed!
** On Wednesday 14.05.25 - 11:26, Ed Vance wrote to Ogg:
Yeah.. those were happier times when I was experimenting with
such pages as a kind of blog.
--- OpenXP 5.0.64
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointFace (21:4/106.21)
There was a regime of software the let you write in an almost read/write fashion to CDs. It didn't really delete anything just write updated directory info. However in using these they couldn't be finalised during use. Once you'd finished with the thing, or it was "FULL" then you had to finalise it to make it "transportable" like a regular CD-ROM..
ST
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
Never saw one or found one. In doing a search now, I've seen how expens the 5 1/4 inch drives are today!
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.49
--- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
I have a 486 box with a 5.25"drive in it.
Haven't had it on in years.
I wouldn't thought 5.25" FDD's would be of interest nowadays.
Never thought to look to price them.
Ed
I wouldn't thought 5.25" FDD's would be of interest nowadays.
Never thought to look to price them.
If you write to a 360K disk in a 1.2M drive, it will probably still be read in another 1.2M drive, but probably not another 360K drive.
I think it's OK to write to a 1.2M disk in a 360K drive, though. But I vaguely remember some reliablity issues there. Again, it's been a long time.
The "newest" vintage machine that I have only uses DD/DS 5.35" floppies.
Wait, did you say ejaculate the disk? You call that civilized? :))
Well, the disk was floppy. :)
It could have just been flaccid also...
Apologies, I'll stop now.`
When I first had a 386 with a 1.2M 5.25 drive, so long as the 360K disk was formatted properly, my XT with the 360K drive could read it just
fine after the 386 wrote to it.
IIRC, there was a switch I would include on the FORMAT command if formating the 360 disk on the 386. It might have very well sensed it on its own, but I didn't want to leave it to chance.
I don't think it could sense, but that might be my faulty memory.my memory is horrible since i developed psychosis xD
That is possible. Luckily I didn't run into that issue with my machines.same
But I do remember the switch on the FORMAT command.I honestly don't think it could sense it, either. I don't remember not using the switch. IIRC, I had a BAT file set up just for formatting 360 disks.
Prices seem to be going from $50 to over $150 and perhaps more.
I have a four, but I don't think I'll sell them all, maybe one or two.
^5.25 disks will never die! I think I have approx 50 of them and
another 50 3/5 disks! You can still purchase both on Amazon.
there is a switch for extended formatting in FreeDOS's format.com to extend format drives
for 360k drives u can use /f:400
for normal 360 use /4
there is a switch for extended formatting in FreeDOS's format.com to ext format drives
for 360k drives u can use /f:400
for normal 360 use /4
IIRC, there was a share/freeware format program that you could do that with back c1990. You had to load the TSR on the system in question, and their format program would let you put ~400-425 on a 360 disk.
Also IIRC, my 1.2M drive could read those without the TSR loaded, but other 360 drives could not.
paul wrote to Ed Vance <=-
^5.25 disks will never die! I think I have approx 50 of them and
another 50 3/5 disks! You can still purchase both on Amazon.
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