8" drive variations

[dwight elvey]

>From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
>Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic 
>Posts"<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>Subject: Re: 8" drive variations
>Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:17:02 +0000 (GMT)
>
> >
> >
> > As hinted at in another post a few days ago, I'd like to add an 8" drive 
>(or
> > possibly more than one if necessary) to my Imagedisk machine in order to 
>be
> > able to archive 8" media.
> >
> > My knowledge of 8" drives is practically non-existent, so what are the 
>gotchas
> >   involved? Things like:
> >
> > Do 8" drives exist in both hard and soft sector variants? Is one far 
>more
> > common than the other (as with 5.25")?
>
>YEs, but it's not a big problem. The hard sectored drives include a
>little circuit to separate the index and sector pulses, it can normally
>be 'jumpered out'.
>
---snip---

Hi
The only time this gets in the way is when you have a hard sectored
controller that needs to see composite index and sectors. Most
all of the hard sectored controllers I've seen, require the composite.
These are like the H89/H8, Polymorphic 8813 and N*. For those
that just need the index, like soft sectored, the separator isn't
a problem. For most micro cases that I know of, the separator is
a problem ( including my Nicolet 1080 ). These need the raw
composite to see both index and sector marks together.
The biggest issue I see is density and number of sides. As I
recall, the two sided have a different location for the index
hole( at least I think it is the sides, not density ). The SA800
and SA900's are single sided single density drives.
On soft sectored, the size of your sectors is up to you. You
just have to make sure that the gap sizes are enough to not
overlap and that they are wide enough that the write enable
turns off soon enough, from the controller, to not overlap the
next sector.
Dwight

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