Comments on: 2DD floppies?

Question: 2DD floppies?

monkey closet — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:35:14 -0800

Does anyone still make 720K 2DD floppies? If so, where can I get some?

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:37:51 -0800

Froogle: 720 floppy

By: clearlynuts

clearlynuts — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:20:05 -0800

It's been a long time since I used a floppy, but can't you write to 1440K disks with a 720k drive?

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:21:27 -0800

yup, the 1.44 mb floppies should work fine.

By: clearlynuts

clearlynuts — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:21:45 -0800

er, meaning, the drive will write 720k on a 1440k disk ...

By: O9scar

O9scar — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:47:42 -0800

For no good reason I have a big unused stack of them. If you'd like them (and pay shipping) I'll send them your way.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:06:25 -0800

If a 1.44MB floppy won't work for some reason, just cover up the hole without the write-protect slider.

I remember seeing ads more than 10 years ago in computer magazines for a punch that would convert 720kB floppies to 1.44MB floppies by making that hole. The theory was that floppy manufacturers used the exact same disk inside. I tried it myself with some metal snips and it indeed worked.

By: coach_mcguirk

coach_mcguirk — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:24:29 -0800

Back when I was still running Cubase 2.0 on Atari ST, I often found that running 1.44MB floppies often caused problems. No idea why, but I would often have failed disks when using HD disks in the DD drive.

By: monkey closet

monkey closet — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:28:22 -0800

nathan_teske has showed me up. I tried a few combinations, but not one that worked...

For reference, it's for an old piece of (Yamaha) music hardware. 1.44 disks *don't* work, and neither does covering the hole...

By: monkey closet

monkey closet — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:33:57 -0800

correction, that froogle search (in the uk at least) just give loads of links to the same Amazon 'this product has been discontinued' page. Think I'll be emailing O9scar...

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:42:27 -0800

You need to have them formatted for 720. They come out of the box formatted for 1.44. I think windows still allows formatting at 720, and if not there are freeware programs that will do it for you. It isn't as good as using a real 720 drive to format them as the r/w head is half the width but it is supposed to work.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:45:49 -0800

Format command syntax

By: rfs

rfs — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:49:21 -0800

I know from experience that if your drive is a 720K drive, like say, an Amiga 1010, the 1.44 disks won't work. I believe the magnetic characteristics are different. You might look at some eBay old computer equipment auctions, but my experience is that the 5.25 C64 floppies last longer than the Amiga 720K ones (I know Amigas formatted to 880K instead of 720K, but the disks are the same DSDD).

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:19:03 -0800

Interesting stuff in the Wikipedia. Still, a fresh diskette that has been manufactured for high density use can theoretically be formatted as double density, but only provided that no information has ever been written on the disk using high density mode (for example, HD diskettes that are pre-formatted at the factory are out of the question). The magnetic strength of a high density record is stronger and will "overrule" the weaker lower density, remaining on the diskette and causing problems. Best to stick with unformatted disks. They are usually cheaper anyway.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:28:55 -0800

Or you could just use these.

By: O9scar

O9scar — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:35:39 -0800

Well, I'm not sure you want me to ship things to the UK, but if there's any kind of computer recycle/reuse shop in your area, they probably have reusable floppy disks.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:00:52 -0800

monkey closet writes "For reference, it's for an old piece of (Yamaha) music hardware. 1.44 disks *don't* work, and neither does covering the hole..."

You need to low level format the 1.44MB to Double Density using a PC, then cover the hole.