From: jerry+a2@jpen.ca
scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us writes:
> Kent Dickey wrote:
>> There are many possible issues. One is that 3.5" drives that are capable
>> of using 1.44MB have smaller heads. These smaller heads write a smaller
>> track (in terms of width) even when writing to 800KB disks.
>
> 3.5" DD and HD drives are both 80-track drives. Head width was an issue
> with 5.25" drives, where SD and DD were 35- or 40-track and HD was 80-track.
> Sharing double-density disks between double- and high-density 5.25" drives
> could be troublesome.
>
> (On x86 hardware, 5.25" DD disks could be formatted to 720K in a
> high-density drive. It wasn't a widespread practice, but when I could get
> 5.25" DD disks for 10ยข each, they were the cheapest backup media for my BBS
> back in the day.)
>
> The OP mentioned having a G3 PowerBook. ISTR there being some issues with
> the floppy drives Apple was using around that time (the last ones before
> they got rid of them altogether) being less reliable with GCR-formatted
> disks. I don't recall having too many problems swapping disks between my
> IIGS and a beige G3 I used to have, but that might've been a function of
> having both machines networked and not needing to use sneakernet to begin
> with. :)
Here's an article that may be interesting in understanding the
difference between Apple II and Mac 3.5" drives, although it's really
the difference between the Apple IIgs IWM controller and other machines:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180704213457/http://dec8.info/Appl
/Apple%20Floppy%20Notes/Mac%20vs.%20IIgs%20sectors.pdf
Summary: the IIgs writes sectors faster on 3.5" drives than any other
Apple machines, including the UniDisk 3.5.
--
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Jerry jerry+a2 at jpen.ca
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