8 inch disk drive

Iltanen · Post by **Iltanen** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:59 pm

I bought some 8 inch disks because they look cool, and I think I could use them to return my homework (Could I bring my homework on a diskette, please?) or something. Question is: Could I ever get an 8 inch disk drive to work if I bought one?

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:52 am

Commodore made a dual 8" drive called the 8280. I suppose you could use that on the VIC-20 if you could find or build an IEEE interface.

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:20 am

I'm impressed you found an 8" disk! That is old school indeed.
I would love to use them just for the nostagia effect.

How many K could be stored on an 8", I think it was 64K - not sure.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:32 am

The capacity depends greatly on the kind of 8" floppy disk: hard or soft sectored etc. The "modern" 8" disks had a capacity somewhere around one megabyte per floppy disk, I think.

Actually the Shugart bus is pretty much the same so you should be able to connect a generic 8" floppy drive to a PC. Then there is the matter few or no BIOSes support those drives, and I believe you'll have a hard time finding a Windows driver too - perhaps DOS or Linux?

On another forum, I read that the development of the CatWeasel has been renewed, and that controller card should in theory be able to read and write many different 8" formats.

As for Commodore drives, I've read on SWoC that Commodore made at least three or four different models, but perhaps the 8280 was the only one to go into mass production while the others were more of prototypes.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:04 pm

Go here for storage info: Table of 8-inch floppy formats

I remember first discovering that these existed in a thrift store. I never imagined such a thing was possible! Wait until you find the elusive 12 inch floppy...

Iltanen · Post by **Iltanen** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:55 pm

Yeah they look funny these days. Surprisingly common on ebay, I thought they'd be more rare. 10 $ for 10 unused ones, not bad IMO.

I wonder if those 12 inch diskettes really existed. I have never even seen a picture. I would love to have one, it would be a real rarity

I'm more and more interested in older computers.. my next great buy will be an Altair 8800. Preferably an unassembled one for christmas holidays.. Just kidding, but has anyone seen Altairs being sold?

Or a replica of the difference machine. Why on earth aren't they mass produced

Suppose I found and were wealthy enough to buy that Commodore disk drive. Could I get it to work with the IEEE interface cartridge?

Wonder if this thing ever pays itself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Squareholepunch.jpg

6502dude · Post by **6502dude** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:57 pm

Jeff-20 wrote:I never imagined such a thing was possible!

When 5.25" floppy was introduced it was referred to as "mini-floppy".

I think I still have a couple 8" floppies around. They came from a DEC PDP-11 system.

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:16 pm

Back in the 80's, I knew a guy who did graphic arts for his business; he had a very elaborate setup including a very sophisticated printer that was huge! All of his data was stored on these 8" disks, and I was fascinated by them, having only just recently being exposed to the 5.25" floppy.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:12 pm

Athana still sells NOS 8" floppy disks. They have the manufacturing tools for producing new 5.25" and 3.5" disks, while the 8" are kept on the shelves from before.

I suppose any Commodore IEEE-488 drive will work on the bus. At least I have managed to get "regular" 2031, 3040, 8050, 8250, 9060 and Corvus hard drive etc to work on a VIC-20 with a IEEE-488 interface.

RobertBe · Post by **RobertBe** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:32 am

Iltanen wrote:I wonder if those 12 inch diskettes really existed. I have never even seen a picture. I would love to have one, it would be a real rarity

One type of 12-inch floppy, from the VCF in 2005:

http://www.dickestel.com/images/expo72.jpg

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 11:20 am

Does anyone remember those wierd 5-1/4" like floppies used by the original Apple Lisa's?

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:13 pm

I think the drive was called Twiggy?

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:15 pm

What's the point of the extra index hole?

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:32 pm

carlsson wrote:I think the drive was called Twiggy?

Yep. There's good information about the oddity here.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:30 am

Supposedly those floppies had enough differences to allow Apple to patent it as an unique product. OTOH other than suppliers of Lisa software and any potential clone manufacturers, I can't see why anyone else would like to use the same kind of floppy drives.

Anyway, floppy disks with dual index holes (not openings for the R/W head) are handy for certain single sided floppy drive systems if you want to flip the disk. My BBC Micro suffers from this. I'm not sure if my disk drive actually is double sided or not but I think the 8271 FDC can only handle single sided 40 or 80 track disks. Therefore I can only format one side on each floppy unless I cut a hole in the jacket for letting the drive see the index hole after flipping the disk. This is not a problem with Commodore nor Atari as those don't seem to check for the index hole anyway.

Denial

8 inch disk drive

8 inch disk drive

Re: 8 inch disk drive