Uncreative Labs

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Do most of you keep the old 360K/1.2MB 5.25"floppy drives or do you upgrade to the more common 1.44MB 3.5" drives?

I noticed the combo 5.25"/3.5" HD drives sell on ebay all the time (and I have a few in use). Don't think I have any 360K drives except for the one external drive that goes to my Tandy HX.

Anybody bother with 1.2MB media anymore?

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

Do most of you keep the old 360K/1.2MB 5.25"floppy drives or do you upgrade to the more common 1.44MB 3.5" drives?

I've got about 20 (1.2MB) still new in the original package around here. Still get a machine occasionally with a 1.2MB 5.25" drive in it. Some used 5.25" 360K's are around here too, even a couple of the original full-height drives from an PC/XT (never got around to testing them as to whether they're good or not).

Quote:

Anybody bother with 1.2MB media anymore?

Enough to start my own black-hole. Laughing

Probably over 3000 disks boxed up---mostly used, waiting for the demand on e-bay to reach "critical mass". By that time the oersted coercivity from them being together for so long will have reduced them to dust...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I have a hard time making space for things I want, let alone storing items on speculation.

Most systems that can use 1.2MB floppies can do 1.44MB as well, since the 1.44MB is still common I don't see too many people needing 1.2MB disks. I can see people needing 1.2MB drives since it can also read the old 360K disks.

If you wanted to make some money you should have a garage full of 720K 3.5" disks, lots of old machines need those (Amiga, Atari ST, etc).

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

I have a hard time making space for things I want, let alone storing items on speculation.

Yeah, that speculation was from 1996, when the former job was selling stuff in scrap sales. At the time it seemed a good idea (got the new drives for about $1 each and all the disks for around $10 total). Now that idea seems to have been a little too rosy. More so was the speculation of getting top dollar for Compaq 386's/486's (though I have to admit they're fairly easy to work on and pretty reliable)...

Quote:

If you wanted to make some money you should have a garage full of 720K 3.5" disks

Unfortunately, I have only a few (<100) of those.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Most of what I collect is asumed to be worthless, keeps me from hoarding and spending too much money on anything.

A general rule of thumb is that anything that was realy popular (or lusted after) when new tends to be realy popular down the road as well.

1.2MB disks were never that popular, 1.44MB ones always outsold them from what I remember, even most new software jumped from 360K to 1.44MB disks (1.2MB ones being special order).

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

Most of what I collect is asumed to be worthless, keeps me from hoarding and spending too much money on anything.

Yeah, same here. But even somewhat "technically-inclined" friends are generally impressed when they give up what they think is useless and I get it working; usually doing something it wasn't really designed for. (i.e.---the Dual P90 HP Vectra XU 5/90 that I now have running Win2K without a hitch). Too many people have to have the "latest and greatest" just to surf, play (low-end) games, and do general office tasks. Most machines are given to me (or obtained very cheaply) and have something quite simple to repair (at least for me). If there was a comparison, it's almost like chucking a TV when your favorite show doesn't come on at it's regular time...

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Hmm...interesting. I remember the 1.2meg disks being pretty popular in my area between the mid 80s to early 90s. Many of my friends had AT clones with 1.2meg drives, and a lot of their software was for that format.

While I didn't in the beginning, I am really starting to like the 1.2meg format (at least if you can avoid bending them). I find that those disks hold out longer than the 3.5" disks since they don't have that annoying spring loaded door that always seems to break.

Currently I have more systems with 1.2 meg drives than 360k, but I have to admit that most of the time I use 1.44meg disks since the images always seem to be in that format.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

its possible to turn a common 1.44mb floppy into a 720kb or evan a 2.88 mb, u just need to fill in the holes by the little metal part. as for 5.25 disk, i know one company that still makes them, hell they evan make 8 inch ones, i think it was, uh, i'll get back to u on that one.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

http://www.mfarris.com/Store/Media.html

found it! they aint cheap, but here they are.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

found it! they aint cheap, but here they are.

YEEEEEEOOOOWCH!!!!!

5.25" floppies at $0.80 a disk????!!!!!!!!!

Maybe it's time for me to crank up a DOS machine and start formatting those 3000+...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

People don't pay much for used floppies, but if you have some nice shrinkwrapped virgin ones they might bid them up.

I would think the magnetic media changes quite a bit from a 720K to a 2.88MB disk, so the same head might not be able to write all of them as well.

I don't even have a 2.88MB floppy for my IBM 9595 with the 2.88MB drive Sad

720K 3.5" disks are getting pricey, wish I would have purchased another box or two of the 500 for $20 I got many years ago.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

well i have about a hundred 720kb ones, only 6 are orignaly 720kb

heres what i pulled of wikipedia
"Taping or otherwise covering the right hole on a HD 3½-inch disk enables it to be 'downgraded' to DD format. This may be done for reasons such as compatibility issues with older computers, drives or devices that use DD floppies, like some electronic keyboard instruments and samplers[53] where a 'downgraded' disk can be useful, as factory-made DD disks have become hard to find after the mid-1990s. See the section "Compatibility" above."

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

HD converted to DD are unreliable, they might work for a day or week but not much longer, they have a different magnetic media.

Trust me if HD to DD was workable nobody would bother buying DD disks at all.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

works for me

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Have you tried them in machines with DD drives like the Amiga/ST over a period of time?

A 1.44MB drive will still read a 1.44MB disk formatted to 720K.

BTW I still have 360K 5.25" disk formatted to 800K in the early 90's that still work fine.