4 ms·

Drat, I was hoping it was like a cassette tape adapter and would work in unmodified disk drives. Do floppy disks advertise their own size, or do systems assume

by AgentME 11y ago

Drat, I was hoping it was like a cassette tape adapter and would work in unmodified disk drives. Do floppy disks advertise their own size, or do systems assume that they can only hold 1.44mb? You might need special driver support I guess, which takes some fun away.

mintplant 11y ago
I expected something like the 3.5mm-to-cassette adapters that exist for older cars with tape decks. http://www.amazon.com/Car-Cassette-Adapter-iPod-Sirius/dp/B000EU0880 http://www.amazon.com/Car-Cassette-Adapter-iPod-Sirius/dp/B0...
- kalleboo 11y ago
  Or SmartMedia flash cards that actually did work in a standard 3.5" floppy drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia edit: Didn't realize they even made MemoryStick and SD Card floppy adapters. So this already existed, sort of! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    You can also get drives that can connect to a motherboard floppy port, and take SD cards. http://www.floppyemulator.com/ http://www.floppyemulator.com/ Note that i think you need to use special files that are read by the drive. I think they are meant as a life extension for older CNC machines and industrial looms.
- esaym 11y ago
  Man total flashback. I didn't even remember those existed, though I think I might have had one now that I think about it...
Sanddancer 11y ago
They advertise their size. Back in the day, there were programs that let you reformat disks with tweaked parameters -- sectors per track, interleaving, etc -- so you could get a greater capacity. Windows 95 was shipped on a disk formatted for 1680k, for example [1]. Off the shelf disks were hit or miss as far as how big you could reformat them to, with some able to handle close to two megs, and others not able to handle much more than 1.44mb. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_Media_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_Media_Format
- ars 11y ago
  > They advertise their size. Everything is under the control of the drive, not the media. They advertise their size as in: tell the drive what to expect. But the drive is in full control of where to write on the disk, and how densely.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Sort of yes, sort of no. Later drives were just black boxes with their own on-board logic that read metadata off the disk, sure. Early drives, though (of the 5.25" variety) relied on the first track of the disk to contain what was basically the disk controller firmware†. As such, you could actually teach an old drive new tricks by coming up with a firmware that used a better encoding scheme, and then encoding the rest of your disk with that scheme. † (though it ran on the CPU, rather than some microcontroller in the drive. "DOS" stands for Disk Operating System for a reason: a large part of it is a set of routines programs can call to make the CPU micromanage the read-head and stepping motor of the dumb disk-drive controller, with concepts like "files" being a mostly-optional thin wrapper above that, rather than some impenetrable abstraction layer.)
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  "and others not able to handle much more than 1.44mb" My first experience installing Linux was using a bunch of disks which were unable to handle even 1.44MB (even though they were sold as 2HD). I couldn't tell, of course, and I had no idea why my install kept on failing or generating errors part way through the installation process :(
ars 11y ago
> Do floppy disks advertise their own size, or do systems assume that they can only hold 1.44mb? The second. With a better read/write head you could store more data on them (for example 2.88mb was available). But the physical media of the disk may or may not have the necessary resolution.
huuu 11y ago
We used to drill holes in a 720K floppy so it would advertise itself as a 1.44MB drive. But in the end it's all about the density of the disk so I'm not sure if you could use a driver to store more data. Also you will need very accurate positioning of the head. So the drive is also a limiting factor. I think the largest floppies where 32MB.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> Drat, I was hoping it was like a cassette tape adapter and would work in unmodified disk drives. Oh, that exists! From 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath A floppy disk drive-compatible SD card adapter. Needs special software, though.

by AgentME 11y ago

mintplant 11y ago

I expected something like the 3.5mm-to-cassette adapters that exist for older cars with tape decks. http://www.amazon.com/Car-Cassette-Adapter-iPod-Sirius/dp/B000EU0880 http://www.amazon.com/Car-Cassette-Adapter-iPod-Sirius/dp/B0...

kalleboo 11y ago
Or SmartMedia flash cards that actually did work in a standard 3.5" floppy drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia edit: Didn't realize they even made MemoryStick and SD Card floppy adapters. So this already existed, sort of! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath
- digi_owl 11y ago
  You can also get drives that can connect to a motherboard floppy port, and take SD cards. http://www.floppyemulator.com/ http://www.floppyemulator.com/ Note that i think you need to use special files that are read by the drive. I think they are meant as a life extension for older CNC machines and industrial looms.
esaym 11y ago
Man total flashback. I didn't even remember those existed, though I think I might have had one now that I think about it...

Sanddancer 11y ago

They advertise their size. Back in the day, there were programs that let you reformat disks with tweaked parameters -- sectors per track, interleaving, etc -- so you could get a greater capacity. Windows 95 was shipped on a disk formatted for 1680k, for example [1]. Off the shelf disks were hit or miss as far as how big you could reformat them to, with some able to handle close to two megs, and others not able to handle much more than 1.44mb. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_Media_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_Media_Format

ars 11y ago
> They advertise their size. Everything is under the control of the drive, not the media. They advertise their size as in: tell the drive what to expect. But the drive is in full control of where to write on the disk, and how densely.
- derefr 11y ago
  Sort of yes, sort of no. Later drives were just black boxes with their own on-board logic that read metadata off the disk, sure. Early drives, though (of the 5.25" variety) relied on the first track of the disk to contain what was basically the disk controller firmware†. As such, you could actually teach an old drive new tricks by coming up with a firmware that used a better encoding scheme, and then encoding the rest of your disk with that scheme. † (though it ran on the CPU, rather than some microcontroller in the drive. "DOS" stands for Disk Operating System for a reason: a large part of it is a set of routines programs can call to make the CPU micromanage the read-head and stepping motor of the dumb disk-drive controller, with concepts like "files" being a mostly-optional thin wrapper above that, rather than some impenetrable abstraction layer.)
rahimnathwani 11y ago
"and others not able to handle much more than 1.44mb" My first experience installing Linux was using a bunch of disks which were unable to handle even 1.44MB (even though they were sold as 2HD). I couldn't tell, of course, and I had no idea why my install kept on failing or generating errors part way through the installation process :(

ars 11y ago

> Do floppy disks advertise their own size, or do systems assume that they can only hold 1.44mb? The second. With a better read/write head you could store more data on them (for example 2.88mb was available). But the physical media of the disk may or may not have the necessary resolution.

huuu 11y ago

We used to drill holes in a 720K floppy so it would advertise itself as a 1.44MB drive. But in the end it's all about the density of the disk so I'm not sure if you could use a driver to store more data. Also you will need very accurate positioning of the head. So the drive is also a limiting factor. I think the largest floppies where 32MB.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

> Drat, I was hoping it was like a cassette tape adapter and would work in unmodified disk drives. Oh, that exists! From 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath A floppy disk drive-compatible SD card adapter. Needs special software, though.