john@wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) (03/07/88)
I'm looking for some input concerning 3.5", 1.44MB floppy drives.
Here's the situation:
This past weekend my freind and I went to a local computer show in
search of a 1.44MB, 3.5" drive for his ALR-386 machine. We found several
dealers selling them and all said "yes,yes...this is 1.44MB and will work
fine in your machine". There seemed to be no discrepency between 720K
and 1.44MB drives. I mean, there was a pile of drives and no matter which
you wanted, you got one off the same pile. The manual included with the
drives seemed fairly complete but made absolutely no mention as to wether
the drive was 720K or 1.44MB. So my freind taking the word of the dealer
bought a drive and hurried home. BTW: The drive is a Toshiba FDD-4603A0K.
The ALR manual seems very clear that you do NOT need any special drivers
such as DOS 3.3 drive.sys as the 1.44 MB floppy is fully supported in
the BIOS. Well needless to say, the drive does *NOT* work as a 1.44 MB
disk but does function 100% as a 720K. He can read/write,etc. as a 720K
but gets a drive error or "track zero not suitable" when trying to
format a 1.44MB disk. Trying everything including the DOS 3.3 drive.sys
yeilded the same results.
Bottom line *****
Whats the deal on 1.44MB vs 720K 3.5" disks ? Are they in fact two
completely different mechanisms as in the 1.2MB/360K 5.25" drives ? It
seems no matter who is selling them at the shows there is no discrepency
shown towards one or the other. It the old "These tires will fit *your*
car perfectly.....what kind of car do you have anyway?" :-) I appreciate
any input and will forward everything to my desperate freind. Thanks!
John
--
John Gayman, WA3WBU | UUCP: uunet!wa3wbu!john
1869 Valley Rd. | ARPA: wa3wbu!john@uunet.UU.NET
Marysville, PA 17053 | Packet: WA3WBU @ AK3P ericr@hpvcla.HP.COM (Eric Ross) (03/12/88)
Be sure that you are using high density floppy discs. The normal 3.5 inch floppy will not format in 1.44 Meg format. You can probably get these from your dealer or you can order a box of ten floppies from a Hewlett Packard dealer(P/N 92192X) Eric Ross hplabs!hpvclx!ericr
odyssey@unix.SRI.COM (Odyssey Research Associates) (03/19/88)
Has anyone successfully installed a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy into an XT class computer? I suspect it is possible with a controller designed to run a 1.2 MB flopper for the XT and one of the new drives and maybe DOS 3.2, but I havent heard of any success yet. This hardware would cost about $195 here in Silicon Valley. B< odyssey@unix.sri.com hplabs!sri-unix!orawest!brian *** Generic clever signature ***