3.25-inch floppies

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 2 Nov 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> In the early days of the PC AT, many PC XT wanted the ability to
> handle the "new" 1.2MB media.  This would have meant replacing the
> floppy controller for one that could do the tri-rate (250/300/500
> Kbps) trick, but such beasts were expensive (I have a Sysgen
> Omnibridge that I use in my XT and it wasn't cheap).  Someone (Fred
> might remember; my mind is too fuzzy right now) came out with a 1.2MB
> drive that would spin down to 180 RPM for high density and 300 RPM
> for double-density use.  Pretty slick--no need to replace your FDC,
> but you get about one-quarter of the read head output voltage at the
> lower speed, so performance on the inner tracks wasn't wonderful.

Weltec

I heard (unconfirmed) that the speed at 180RPM wasn't always close enough