Got 8" drive on PC working

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 8:07 PM
> Ok, I finally found an 8" drive that worked.  I don't think there's a
> coincidence that it's half-height, and seems to have been made in the 1982
> timeframe.  I can't tell who the manufacturer is because I haven't
> unbolted it from the chassis it's installed in to check yet.
>
> I was able to format a disk mostly successfully (more on this in a bit)
> and transfer MS-DOS 6.22 to it.  It was pretty nifty booting DOS on my PC
> off an 8" drive ;)
>
> So anyway, when I was formatting the disk, it didn't seem to like the last
> 4-6 tracks or so.  Above the clatter of the noisy fan (bad bearings) I
> could hear the head recalibrating.  When the format finished, it reported
> 107520 bytes in bad sectors.  This comes out to 210 bad sectors (assuming
> 512 bytes per sector) which comes out to some weird number of tracks.
> Aren't there supposed to be 26 sectors per track?
>
> The main hurdle has been jumped, so I'm in good shape at this point.
>
> Thanks for the tips, all!
>
> -- 
>
> Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer 
> Festival
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8" drives have 77 tracks, PC-DOS uses 40 or 80 tracks.  Only the 80 track 
mode (5.25" HD - 1.2mb) comes close.

Trying to use 80 tracks can destroy your drive.

STOP IT!!!!

You should NEVER use it to boot DOS unless you get Open-DOS and create a 
driver for 8".



Randy
www.s100-manuals.com