bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu ([bob, mon]) (03/02/88)
In article <3a92fb2f.44e6@apollo.uucp> nelson_p@apollo.uucp writes: > > I was toying with the idea of getting this system with only a 3.5" > floppy (and the 20 Meg drive) and forgetting about a 5.25" drive. > I'm not really interested in 'shareware' and games, which seem > like the main things not yet available on 3.5". Is 3.5" the > wave of the future or do people still regard it a just a marketing > experiment at this point? > > --Peter Nelson I will move to 3.5" as fast as my little wallet will let me (not very fast :-( and I expect many others to as well. Case in point: I recommended a new word-proc/computer for an academic office recently. The most computer- literate person in this office owns a laptop which wants to trade disks with other machines. The laptop has only 3.5" drives. I expect that others in this office will get personal laptops sooner or later; I'm quite sure that whatever machine they choose (10:1 odds on Z-181) will have 3.5" drives. So the office machine necessarily was spec'ed with a 3.5" drive. In fact, it also has a 5.25" drive (plus a HD), and serves as a bridge between all the machines in the office.
webb@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Thomas Webb) (04/04/89)
Hello all, Do 1.4 megabyte 3.5" drives really have problems reading and writeing to 720k dsikettes? My office is buying a new computer and the salesman tells us that even with the proper driver most high-density 3.5 inch drives will not reliably read/write/format etc. disks from the low density dirve in a NEC Multispeed portable. I don't understand why this should be, and the salesman has not given me any particular reasons. Moreover, disks from the laptop do work in all of the high-density drives that we have tried, except for the first dirve provided by the vendor. So, my feeling is that the salesman just hasn't done his homework and doesn't know how to set the drives up properly, but I am not a harware guru and I don't want to say anthing without some facts. Any facts? Thanks for your help, tom -- =============================================================================== webb@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.edu ===============================================================================
wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) (04/05/89)
In article <3647@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> webb@uhccux.UUCP (Thomas Webb) writes: Do 1.4 megabyte 3.5" drives really have problems reading and writing to 720k diskettes? My office is buying a new computer and the salesman tells us that even with the proper driver most high-density 3.5 inch drives will not reliably read/write/ format/etc. disks from the low density dirve in a NEC Multispeed portable. To the best of my knowledge, your salesman is mistaken. My initial impression is that he may be getting confused by the situa- tion with 5.25" drives. There *are* well-known problems with using 360K/5.25" diskettes in 1.2M/5.25" drives. This is because the higher- density diskettes have more tracks, and the heads on the high-density drives are therefore narrower. With 3.5" drives, though, the difference between 720K and 1.44M is in the recording density on each track. The number of tracks is the same (80) for both kinds of disks. Hence, the difficulties with 5.25" drives handling both high- and low-density disks do *not* carry over to 3.5". A properly functioning 1.44M/3.5" diskette drive should have no trouble working with 720K diskettes. Depending on your driver software, you may have to specify some special flags on your FORMAT command in order to format a disk in the manner you desire; but that's likely to be your only problem. -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named _Enterprise_."
rlb@cs.odu.edu (Robert Lee Bailey) (04/07/89)
In article <3647@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> webb@uhccux.UUCP (Thomas Webb) writes: > >Hello all, > >Do 1.4 megabyte 3.5" drives really have problems reading and writeing >to 720k dsikettes? My office is buying a new computer and the >salesman tells us that even with the proper driver most high-density >3.5 inch drives will not reliably read/write/format etc. disks from >the low density dirve in a NEC Multispeed portable. I don't >understand why this should be, and the salesman has not given me any >particular reasons. Moreover, disks from the laptop do work in all of >the high-density drives that we have tried, except for the first dirve >provided by the vendor. So, my feeling is that the salesman just >hasn't done his homework and doesn't know how to set the drives up >properly, but I am not a harware guru and I don't want to say anthing >without some facts. Any facts? > >Thanks for your help, > >tom > >-- >=============================================================================== >webb@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.edu >=============================================================================== PURE B.S.! 1.44M drives CAN reliably read/write/format 720K diskettes. I do it all the time on my system. Bob Bailey