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DSDD 8" floppy disks WANTED

A

alan8086

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
331
Location
Burnley, UK
Does anyone have any DSDD 8" floppy disks? - preferably in known working condition - before I go blowing money on eBay NOS

I need some reliable media for my NEC APC.

I did find an old thread about - www.athana.com - on here somewhere but it concluded that they no longer sell 8" floppies.

Oh, I'm based in the UK.

Thanks,

Alan.
 
I'm across the puddle. I may have a box of nos, but untested. Shipping would amount to a horror movie.

I've come to have a lot of faith in old disks...some...but not so much with others. I've never successfully booted a computer with an 8" disk. OK once, an NEC APC. I don't get a lot of things right :(
 
Hi 2icebitn - thanks for your reply!

I have a lot of 8" disks with my NEC APC, most still bootable. They do foul up the drive heads over time though.

I was going to buy these - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/263667248504 - thought I'd ask here first though.

Seller says he has had them 5 years and kept in dry conditions. The other 25 or so years is an unknown however.

I've got loads of SSSD 8" floppies that work great - just no decent DSDD.

Do you have an NEC APC too then?
 
No longer. All I have left is the Butler Flats Associates aftermarket 5 1/4" drive set and expansion board. No surviving drivers though.

He's asking too much. Besides they were probablyn floating in pickle juice for those unspoken 25 years. He's just been drying them out for 5.
 
Ok - are you selling the expansion board and drives ? :)

Maybe 5.25 is they way to go with my APC?

Oops! No surviving drivers - maybe not :(
 
I have faith in you Allan. You're man enough to write your. I for one don't need no stinking drivers!

Chances are a 5 1/4" HD drive would work in an APC anyway. It has an 8272. Someone should work on that.

Edit or maybe just a 360k drive. With some os tweaks?
 
A long standing shame of mine is that I never really learned to code in any language. I messed with BASIC as a kid. I got most of my kicks pulling old TVs and PCs out of skips - more into the hardware. No chance can I write drivers. You are correct though - the APC cant be that far off reading a 5.25" drive?
 
As I said I don't have an APC anymore, so there's really no point in me hanging on to it. But I had half a mind to do just that and explore recreating the drivers. It probably wouldn't be all that bad. I'm keeping my APC III, but that's largely a different lizard.
 
If you look at the history of the NEC PC98 computers (the APC is sort of the commercial relative), there was no logical difference between disk formats. 8", 5.25" and 3.5" all use exactly the same (native) format. The 5.25" drives for this series were initially high-density only (I've got one somewhere) and the 3.5" drives were not only high-density, but spun at 360 RPM, just like their bigger cousins. That's what was remarkable about the whole PC98 line--it didn't have the alphabet soup of different floppy formats.

So yes, you can use a 5.25" HD or a 3.5" HD drive configured appropriately in place of the 8". Most of the task will be wiring-related.
 
PC98 floppies are quite common on older Japanese CNC gear.

Another early 16-bit Japanese machine was the Mitsubishi Multi-16 (1981), not at all compatible with the NEC 9801 series.
 
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