Disks for 8050 Drive

[KevinO]

I'm planning to start playing with my 8050 drive one of these days soon. Do you guys recommend any particular disks to use? All my "new" disks are Sony DS/DD. I understand that the 8050 was supposed to use "quad density" disks, but I don't know if I've ever seen one. I also read that the High Density disks don't work, so most people used DS/DD disks. I was just wondering if there are particular ones to use, or to avoid.

 

[MikeS]

HD disks will indeed not work well, but you should be OK with pretty well any good quality DS/DD disks like those Sonys; the so-called "quad density" disks of yore were actually the same linear density as double density disks, but tested to be error-free in the extra tracks (96 tracks vs. 48 ).

I've used pretty well all types of disks except HD in my 8050s (DD, QD, even hard-sector, front and back) and had no problems other than what one might expect anyway with 30+ year old drives and disks.

 

[carlsson]

Some people even claim that certified 96 tpi DD were relabeled as 48 tpi DD because that was what the market demanded and would understand. Not every computer store would have a sales clerk that could convince the customer a 96 floppy disk indeed was compatible and perhaps even better than a 48 floppy disk.

 

[KevinO]

Well...disappointed. Digging through my stuff, I found I actually have 3 8050 drives. None of them work.

One doesn't even spin the disks when you send a command, so we'll ignore that one for now. The others both give me the same result when I try to format a disk:

HEADER "TESTDISK", D0

? BAD DISK

Am I using the command to format correctly? Tried with the Sony, a Kodak, and a 3M disk.

 

[dave_m]

The others both give me the same result when I try to format a disk:

HEADER "TESTDISK", D0

? BAD DISK

Am I using the command to format correctly? Tried with the Sony, a Kodak, and a 3M disk.

Try: header "testdisk", D0, I01

to explicitly specify a disk ID to make sure the drive will format the floppy. Otherwise it may only try to erase the directory info.

 

[KevinO]

Thanks Dave. That was exactly it. I had completely forgotten that. It worked perfectly, at least on one of my drives. I will test the other one later.

 

[carlsson]

If you prefer, you can use the old Basic V2 syntax: OPEN 1,8,15,"N0:TESTDISK,01". I don't know if it makes more sense, but I find it easier to forget the ID attribute if given as an extra argument to the Basic command than when it is included in the string.

As for the drive that doesn't spin, try to read the error channel at power on: PRINT DS$. If you get a blank line or the computer hangs, you have an issue with the IEC communication. If you get a valid CBM DOS message, at least you know that part of the drive should be OK.

 

[KevinO]

Thanks Anders. In the V2 syntax: OPEN 1,8,15,"N0:TESTDISK,01", which part designates which drive I'm formatting? Is it the N0? I don't know how I've managed to be a Commodore enthusiast for 27 years (C64/128...on the PET I'm a newbie) without learning how to format a disk the old fashioned way, but on the C64 I always had a Super Snapshot or something that let me use a shortcut. However, even there you still had to specify the ID, so I feel silly forgetting that part.

I'm at work now, but I'll try some of that out later tonight. Thanks again.

 

[dave_m]

In the V2 syntax: OPEN 1,8,15,"N0:TESTDISK,01", which part designates which drive I'm formatting? Is it the N0?

Kevin,
The n0: specifies to NEW drive 0 while n1: specifies drive 1. Drive 1 is one one on the left of a dual floppy drive.

If you are using BASIC 4, there is a utility called BATPRO that fits in the spare ROM sockets $A000 and $9000 that has a lot of disk shortcuts. For instance, formatting (newing) a diskette would be: >n0:testdisk,01. A limitation is that it assumes IEEE device 8.
-Dave

 

[carlsson]

For that matter, isn't there an optional Uxx argument to HEADER, CATALOG etc to specify unit number? I know it defaults to 8 so in most cases you wouldn't have to worry about it unless you have multiple drives rather than just one dual drive.

 

[dave_m]

Anders,
That's correct, the BASIC 4 commands have that useful option. It comes in handy when using PETDisk in addition to a Commodore disk drive.
-Dave

 

[Bungo Pony]

Those drives are awesome! When I had my CBM (which I stupidly got rid of) I was shocked at the storage capacity on one floppy. I think each side of the floppy was somewhere around 1MB (2MB if you use the other side of the floppy) Even back in the 1990s, that was a lot of space.

 

[carlsson]

Half of that, 500K per side or 1 MB for a double sided drive. Of course if you have a 8250, you get effectively 2 MB storage space if you use both drives.