Xerox 820-II diskette formats

[Steven Hirsch]

On Sat, 2 May 2009, Richard Lynch wrote:

>> Thanks to the kindness of Richard Lynch, I now have the 8" drive cabinet
>> to go with my newly-repaired Xerox 820-II.  The drive mechanisms were
>> non-functional, unfortunately, so I need to scrounge together something
>> from my junk, err parts collection.
>>
>> I cannot find anything definitive regarding compatibility.  I thought
>> these machines could use DSDD drives (one site mentioned Shugart SA851s),
>> but that would be 1.2M of capacity and everything I've found on the web
>> indicates perhaps 1/2 of that.
>>
>> Can anyone tell me what will work with the unit and what low-level format
>> it writes?

> Both of the non-functional drives that were removed from the cabinet were
> 851s, and a large percentage of the 820-II floppies that I'm in the process
> of archiving are DSDD.

Interesting.  So the maximum capacity was approx. 1.2MB on those 
diskettes?

I found an SA851 in my collection that I believe works and am working on 
getting another.

One thing I should have asked:  Can you tell me the jumper settings on the 
units you pulled?

Steve


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