A question regarding floppy drives functionality..

[Allison]

>
>Subject: A question regarding floppy drives functionality..
>   From: Marian Capel <marian.capel at bluewin.ch>
>   Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:26:22 +0100
>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Since this list has a number of people that are very knowledgable on the 
>subject :
>
>Am i correct in thinking that, given a custom FDC, i could run a modern 
>1.44 floppy  in FM mode, and at much lower data rates i.e. (say 50 KHz.) ?

You may not be able to run that slow but you could test by recording square
waves of varying frequencies and look at what comes back.

>Background : I am musing on how to give a small amount of storage, say 
>around 100kb, to a very small low tech cpu.
>I do not care about speed and efficiency.

Myself for 100k I'd use a EEprom. Eprom or even 128k ram with a battery.

>I am aware that IDE-based solutions are simpler, both hard- and software 
>wise, but I would prefer a floppy based solution.

FYI the slowest floppies are the oldest 5.25 like the SA400 and TM100
as they will reach down to 64khz, I did some testing once.  I'd suspect
some of the later 360k drives would do well (slow data) too.  I do
know that most of the 360k drives work fine at FM (single density) data
rates (125khz).

Allison