iaips-dcas@USC-ISI.ARPA (08/26/85)
I have a 1982 vintage KayproII with badly worn disk drives. Since I'll
be replacing them soon I decided to get the Micro-Cornucopia Pro 8 upgrade kit
and buy double sided drives, either double density or quad density.
Recently I was informed of a good deal (99 bucks) on Shugart DSQD drives
so, I am leaning in that direction. (760k - Wow!)
Being a cautious sort, I would like to know if anyone out there has done
a similar upgrade and can clue me in on the possible pitfalls. Thanks.
Daniel Reigada
-------swillett%ucbamber.CC@UCB-VAX.ARPA (08/28/85)
I have a 1982 vintage Kaypro II with the Pro8 upgrade and four half height drives - two DSDD, two DSQD (all Teac) which has also been upgraded to 5 MHz. I have had virtually no problems with this combo. I installed a switch which allows me to set either the Double Density or the Quad Density pair as "A" and "B" drives. It is therefore possible for my machine to act like a KP 4 with the flip of a switch. I do not recommend leaving yourself with no 48 tpi drive, since the 96 tpis are not completely compatible with the 48s, and if you want to be able to exchange disks with other machines you need a 48. My understanding of the problem is that a 96 drive cannot completely erase or write over a 48 track. The 96 doesn't care, since it has a narrow head and only sees the track it writes (although it can read a wider track by reading just the middle of it). However if you take a disk which was written on with a 48 drive, then write over part of it (say the directory!) with a 96, and then try to read it again with a 48, the 48 sees some of the old track along with the new track and gets garbage. Any way, that's what I did, and it gives me about 2 1/4 meg of floppy stor- age on board my Kaypro. Then I added a 1 meg RAM disk.......