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5.25" 96 track per inch

C

cruising

Experienced Member
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Mar 15, 2014
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There is a company here in sweden that sells 5.23" floppys, i asked how the amount in KB the held, he said "96 track per inch"

And from wiki:
In the early 1980s, “quad density” 96-track-per-inch drives appeared, increasing the capacity to 720 KB
and
In 1984, along with the IBM PC/AT, the high density disk appeared, which used 96 tracks per inch combined with a higher density magnetic media to provide 1,200 KB

Does that mean that i cant use the floppys they selling in my 360kb drive?


EDIT: if im not wrong, my tandon is a T100-2 and can only read 48 tracks?
 
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I'd bet those are standard high density floppy disks. Without additional information it's hard to say. I've never had very good luck using HD media in a double density 5.25" drive since it requires higher drive current on the heads to flip the bits. 3.5" disks it was kinda possible.
 
geoffm3 said:
I'd bet those are standard high density floppy disks. Without additional information it's hard to say. I've never had very good luck using HD media in a double density 5.25" drive since it requires higher drive current on the heads to flip the bits. 3.5" disks it was kinda possible.
Click to expand...

It says 5.25 DSDD-disks, 10-pck on their site, so it must then be DSDD disks, you can check it here
http://www.ggsdata.se/index.php?page=Datorer/amiga-old.php

And they also says the are flippable so you can read/write on both sides
 
96tpi double density = 720KB (kind of a weird format, but my 3B2-400 uses this)
96tpi high density = boring 1.2Mb disks.

If it's the first type - it should work fine as 360KB (since they're the same, just slightly higher quality**)
If it's the second type it will not go well - different media <-- most likely this one

Personally I'd just grab boring 360KB rated floppies.



** I haven't checked this as I don't own any genuine 96tpi DD blank media, but I know that most 48tpi DD blank media formats fine at 96tpi as long as the head is in "double density" mode.
 
So, since the site says 5.25 DSDD and also that they are 96 track per inch, it should work just fine? or do i get you guys wrong?
They dont cost much for a pack of 10, so if they dont work...i dont lose much cash..maybe my temper hehe.

@SpidersWeb: yes thats what i was afraid for, that they would be HDs at 96tpi. so i have no idea if they are DSDDs for real
 
geoffm3 said:
Are these bulk-packed unlabeled floppies? Might be hard to tell based on appearance if they are DD or HD.
Click to expand...

Yes they are bulk-packed, but the manufacturer (i guess) must have some info about the disks when they selling them to the guys that put them in their stores? They would be dumb to just put the disks in their store and just say "these are DSDD" if these ones aint!?

Why i want to buy brand new ones is to see if it is my floppy drive or my floppys that makes it hard to read the ones i have, with brand new ones it should work fine if my floppys is to old.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Forget about the "TPI" label--they're 5.25" DSDD floppies. In the PC universe, these are "360K" floppies and will work fine as such.
Click to expand...

Ill just buy a pack of 10 and see if they work or not. I should see directly when i open the pack if they have that HD rings in the center or not...i guess?

EDIT: should i invest one of these? should it work in my XC? http://www.ggsdata.se/PC/cwisa.php
 
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Don't rely on the rings being there or not.
If they unfortunately do turn out to actually be DSHD, they'll fail in your 360KB drives (random bad sectors etc etc) but magically work 100% in a a DSHD drive.

Catweasel is a popular product, but it depends on what you want it for.
 
Chuck(G) said:
This must be very old stock (if it still exists and is not a mistake in the web page). It depends upon what you'd like to do.

I would assume that there's a label somewhere on the floppy package or even on the disks themselves.
Click to expand...

No, i have already bought a pack of 10 discs, so its not a mistake, but the link i posted is not for the floppys, its a link to a Catweasel ISA card that i wonder if you recomed me to get one?
 
Chuck(G) said:
That CW ISA board must be old stock. They haven't been made since the 1990s. I'd check with the vendor to see if they really had one.
Click to expand...
They do have one (or more), they told me some months ago and gave me a link to that board, so at least they had them at that time, but...worth buying or not?
 
Chuck(G) said:
It depends upon what you'd like to do with them.
Click to expand...
I have 1.2Mb drive that i want to see if it works, and even try a 1.44mb drive, because...thats what this card is for right?
But the problem then would to get the right cable with a flat connector and a pin connector..
 
cruising said:
I have 1.2Mb drive that i want to see if it works, and even try a 1.44mb drive, because...thats what this card is for right?
But the problem then would to get the right cable with a flat connector and a pin connector..
Click to expand...

The Catweasel was a special disk controller primarily for handling some more "exotic" disk formats... it could read GCR encoded floppies for Amiga and Apple for example. If all you're interested in is IBM compatible disk formats then you shouldn't need one.
 
cruising said:
I have 1.2Mb drive that i want to see if it works, and even try a 1.44mb drive, because...thats what this card is for right?
But the problem then would to get the right cable with a flat connector and a pin connector..
Click to expand...
Depends on what you're expecting. You wont be booting off it, or running software from it.
It's really for imaging/recreating disk media in a variety of formats - not a replacement floppy controller. If you were doing lots of work with Commodore or Amiga disks it'd save a lot of time.

XT-FDC. That's a newly designed project using modern parts which provides a normal XT floppy controller with full support (and BIOS extensions) for 1.2 and 1.44 drives. There was also versions of this from the 80's but they can be tricky to find. Often called something like "HD-FDC" or similar.

Something you can do for little cost - remember those cheap Multi IO controllers from the 386 era? IDE,Floppy,Parallel,Serial, Game ports etc? Well the only part of the whole thing that's 16 bit is the IDE - so you can install one as a replacement for the original floppy card. It'll behave just like the original did, but will also be able to understand the higher data rate of 1.44 and 1.2Mb floppies. Software support (so you can go FORMAT A: etc) can be provided with 2M-BIOS (third party), DRIVER.SYS (MS DOS), or in later versions a DRVPARAM setting in CONFIG.SYS.

Flat -> Edge cables are a lot easier to find than Edge -> Edge btw :)
 
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