Floptical

[evildragon]

my teacher here in my technical college just gave me an old Iomega Floptical drive..

it's from 1993, and so I call that pretty much vintage..

How do I use this drives jumpers, and can it use regular floppy disks? It has no manual, and I tried doing a google search on the model number and got nowhere..

Io20S...

 

[Vlad]

I always thought floptical sounded like an STD.

Anyway I'm not positive, but I don't think it could use regular floppies since they were magnetic and thats optical. I THINK anyway...

 

[evildragon]

yea, that's the weird part..

the floptical disks look EXACTLY like a regular floppy.. the only thing optical about them is that they have optical sensors to find a track.. but they do have magnetic heads in them.. that do most of the data work..

 

[Vlad]

I think I remember seeing something about the two being incompatible, I may be thinking of something else though.

 

[Vlad]

An utterly random Google search turned up a few websites that said that standard floppies do indeed work in Floptical drives. Same for LS120 "SuperDisk" drives too.

 

[Sharkonwheels]

For some reason, some SGI's had them. I THINK one of my 4 indy's has it.
I believe it was a standard floppy, as well as using a 21Mb floptical disk.

The ones in the SGI's, at least, WERE able to read/format/write standard 1.44MB floppy disks. The one's int eh SGI's were SCSI units.

Tony

 

[evildragon]

yea, minds a SCSI one too.. I'm going to use my Adaptec SCSI host adapter with it..

the drive does look like a standard floppy, minus the SCSI.. but those jumper settings, nothing match for it, and i can't find any documentation for it..

 

[Geo3]

From what I remember it uses the 21meg and the HD 3.5 disks. That was a cheaper way to go than getting a Super Drive and a card for the IIgs. But the 21meg carts are now hard to find. The jumpers are more likely ID number setting for the SCSI chain. Other than that I can not help much.

Take Care,
Geo3

 

[Yzzerdd]

I own a 21Mb Floptical drive. You usually can use 1.44Mb disks, and even the 2.(83?)Mb disks as well. As for the switches, all I can do is tell ya what mine are set at...