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Anyone know the dimensions, capacity, and manufacturer of the mini 5.25" floppies?

olePigeon

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Anyone know the dimensions, capacity, and manufacturer of the mini 5.25" floppies?

A while back I had a website bookmarked that now no longer exists. It had a bunch of older floppy formats. One of them looked almost identical to a 5.25" floppy disk, but it was the size of a 3.5" and (I think) held 360kb. It was just a half-sized 5.25" floppy.

Anyone else seen one of these? Know what I'm talking about? Trying to find out more information.
 
Why not ask if someone actually has one? :)

It's a 3¾" Dysan. 40 cylinders, 2 sides. Promoted by Shugart and Dysan.

About the only machine I know of that used it was a particular model of the Seequa Chameleon.
 
Could it have also been an AmDek 3" compact floppy? IIRC, there were double- and single-sided versions that were 1:1 compatible with Shugart interface 5.25" drives. The Amstrad PCW CP/M machines used them, and they were known for belt failures.
 
No, AFAIK, the Amdek used a CF30. These are genuine shrunk-down-from-5¼" 3¼ disks. I suppose you'd like a photo?

You're correct...I'd misread the original post about the media being exactly like a 5.25" floppy! I would like pictures though, weird storage media is neat!
 
Why not ask if someone actually has one? :)

It's a 3¾" Dysan. 40 cylinders, 2 sides. Promoted by Shugart and Dysan.

About the only machine I know of that used it was a particular model of the Seequa Chameleon.

That's it! :D The miniature floppy. Hah. Are they rare? I've never, ever seen one in person. I'd love to get my hands one.
 
They were only offered for a time on one model of the Chameleon and weren't that popular. Yes, I suppose they are rare. The drives I have aren't labeled, but I do remember that some drives were labeled "Shugart Venture". All disks I've ever seen are Dysans (I have a box of 5).

Since the drives are the same physical size as 3.5" half-height drives of the time, I imagine that they were swapped out with the conventional 3.5" drives early on.
 
Ooooo. OK, I'm gonna print out some pictures, head to Weird Stuff, then thoroughly sift through their old floppy/HDD section. Maybe I'll get lucky. One of their isles has full height drives and 5.25" floppies.
 
I sifted through all that I could and didn't find any. However, I did come across two unopened 3" compact floppies. Anyone interested in a trade for a 3 1/4" floppy?
 
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