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I still have a few 8" floppy disks and you can more understand why they were called floppy disks when you hold one of those vs the 5 1/4" disks.
by macjohnmcc 7y ago
I still have a few 8" floppy disks and you can more understand why they were called floppy disks when you hold one of those vs the 5 1/4" disks.
- ddgflorida 7y agoI've got one from an old S-100 system.
- cr0sh 7y agoI have an Altair - when I bought it, it came with a controller card for an 8-inch floppy system...with one slight difference: It was for so-called "hard sectored" drives. If you know about floppies, you know they have a timing hole near the hub ring; as this flies past a sensor, the controller can use it to keep the speed of the motor constant, as well as determine what sector on a track is currently under the head of the drive. Depending on timing and other factors, it can allow for varying size sectors - this is known as "soft sectors". Hard sector drives had a similar sensor, but the floppies had - instead of a single hole - multiple holes spaced around the hub - one hole for each sector, hence "hard sectored"... It was mainly a difference with the media and controller, not so much the drive itself, IIRC. The problem is that, if I ever could even find an actual drive for the system, I'd probably never find any media; as it is, it's getting more difficult to find 5.25" media in the old 8-bit era "low-density" format - at least, anything new (similarly, low-density 3.5" floppies are difficult to find - which stinks for Amiga owners). High density floppies in both 5.25" and 3.5" sizes are much easier to find - though the 5.25" drives can be an issue (not that they are hard to find, but sometimes the prices are thru the roof - mainly because of demand from industrial controllers that used PCs for CNC control needing replacements).