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From: ar4@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Piper Keairnes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Drilling holes in DS/DD -> DS/HD
Message-ID: <5912@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 89 22:52:18 GMT
References: <16918215MES@MSU>
Reply-To: ar4@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Piper Keairnes)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 37

In article <16918215MES@MSU> you write:                                    
>A student friend of mine said that a buddy of his drilled a hole        
>in his DS/DD 3.5" floppy to convert it to a High Density disk,         
>and IT WORKED! I know this is probably not advisable, but
>is this the same trick they played on us with the 400 k disks -
>some of which worked fine formatted to 800k? (also risky I guess)
>Has Anyone else tried this? (those DS/HD are still pretty expensive)
                                     
  I know a few people that REGULARLY format 800k disks to HD format. They
don't drill the hole, they use a soldering iron. This decreases the amount
of loose material floating around inside the disk.
                                 
Anyways, here are the results: 5-15% failure rate for 800k -> HD  
                               1% failure rate for color 800k -> HD
                                              
The people using the 800k disks buy them from MEI Micro and have found that
the disks that won't format to 1.4 meg will also not format at any other level.
That is, if the disk is good to begin with, it will work at all formats. Now,
I have bought about 100 disks from MEI Micro and have not had one failure. Must
be my clean environment or maybe they had drive problems to begin with.

Anyways, any way you go about it, the 400 -> 1.4meg is the cheapest way to go.
Takes a little time to "burn" the holes in but it all for a good cause...

For all the cheap people in the world, MEI Micro can be reached at:

    1-800-634-3478  COLUMBUS, OHIO

3.5" DS/DD disks in quantities of 25 at 49 cents each
50 disks with shipping and 100 labels (my last order) costs $31.50
no failures yet!!!


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| Piper Keairnes | ar4@mentor.cc.purdue.edu |        General Consultant        |
| (317) 495-4273 |                          |Purdue University Computing Center|
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