8' DSDD disk

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 5:03 PM


> On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Jules Richardson wrote:
>> [btw, where did we suddenly get an 8-foot floppy from!?]
>
> USUALLY that its from a typo, or a cultural difference in punctuation.
> I have a [damaged/unusable] platter that probably came from either a 1401
> or an aftermarket drive on a 1620.  It is 2 feet in diameter, but seems
> larger.  After I showed it to a class to emphasize Moore's law, I asked
> them about their recollections of it from a week before - MOST estimated
> THREE feet, and a few went as high as FOUR!  But none of them thought that
> it was over 5 feet, and certainly not eight.
>
>
>> If the 8088 has an 8 bit bus and the 8086 is 16 bits, is there a good
>> reason why it didn't get named the 80816? I'm assuming that's what the
>> last digit in the number signifies...
>
> Sorry, but the last digit is NOT bits.  It was simply a progression:
> 8085, 8086, 8087 (FPU for 8086), 8088 (8086 chopped down to be cheap)
> There does not appear to be any reliable pattern to the intel numbering.
> There are conflicting accounts for the naming of the 4004, 8008, etc.
>
> At least the Pentium name is reasonably documented (to be more easily
> trademarkable (inspite of the Pentaxium))
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred     cisin at xenosoft.com

The real questions should be:

What speed does an 8 foot disk rotate at?

How big is the drive?

What is the power requirements for the spindle motor?

What is the capacity?

Were there any 8 foot hard sectored disks and how many sectors?

Were track density measured in TPI or TPF?

How much does a box of ten disks cost?

Is there an S100 interface?


:)

Randy
www.s100-manuals.com