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From: fzsitvay@techbook.com (Frank Zsitvay)
Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm
Subject: Re: Reply to Big Board II
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.045012.25373@techbook.com>
Date: 2 Dec 90 04:50:12 GMT
References: <901126112316052-MTAVN3*John.R.Lyman@cdcnet.ahse.cdc.com>
Organization: TECHbooks of Beaverton Oregon - Public Access Unix
Lines: 48

In article <901126112316052-MTAVN3*John.R.Lyman@cdcnet.ahse.cdc.com> John.R.Lyman@cdcnet.ahse.cdc.com writes:
>
>  I have a Big Board II, and was looking for some 1.2 Meg DSDD 8" floppy
>drives.  I found them to be very expensive compared to 1.2 Meg 5.25" drives.

   Hmm - I don't know where you were looking for 8 inch drives, but i have
found that usually they can be had very cheaply.  the key is not to buy
them mail order, as most mail order houses charge too much and they are
expensive to ship compared to 5.25 inch drives.

   however, there are advantages to the 5.25 inch hd drives, namely the
ease of obtaining media.  for 8 inch systems, you sometimes have to get
quite creative to find the disks, but usually when you do they are
very cheap.  (exception - radio shack)

>So I went out and bought a PC compatible (i.e. standard) 1.2 Meg 5.25" drive
>and hooked it up to the BB2.  I now have a 1.2 meg floppy drive!  I figure
>that a 3.5" drive should also work, but I haven't tried one yet.

   they do work, and there is an added bonus.  if you modify your bios
to use all 80 tracks on each side, you'll get more data on them than
an ibm can.

>  I had two problems, 1) the BIOS was assembled to support single sided
>drives only, so I had to change a EQU and reassemble, 2) the 5.25" drives
>don't usually provide a READY signal like the old 8" drives did, I just
>hard wired this signal to ZERO (this causes a retry during formatting
>when you switch sides, and may cause some when the motor has to start up,
>but, I haven't noticed any problems.  The 5.25" drive is faster than the
>old SSDD 8" drives, and a lot quieter (the motor shuts off too)!

   that i don't agree with.  the tandon 848-2 drives in my trs6000 are
very close to being a triffle faster than the teac hd drive in my at.
it's virtually dead even.  the tandon runs with a 3ms step rate.
 
   incidentally, the tandon drives put 1.2 megs on a disk, and can be
had for $30 here in portland.  they are perhaps the best half-height
double sided 8 inch floppies ever made.
 
   by the by, i have a question regarding 8 inch floppies on ibm
clones.  uniform is very handy in formatting oddball disk formats,
but i was wondering if it is possible to use an 8 inch drive on an
AT floppy controller to format and read 8 inch formats??

-- 
fzsitvay@techbook.COM - but don't quote me on that....

American Oil Company motto - Bend over, We'll pump!!!