Re: Disk Flipping and Two Disk???

[Gregory Weston <uce@splook.com>]

In article <1180985715.571490.169590@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
 heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:

> On Jun 4, 8:31 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > In practice, "flippy" disks are just as reliable as single-direction
> > disks.
> >
> > People made up lots of reasons about why this wouldn't work, but except
> > for the truly rare case of *single-sided* media, there was never any
> > actual evidence, since they work perfectly.
> >
> > The rule for Apple 5.25" disks is "if it formats, it works"--and works
> > for a very long time.
> >
> > Appleworks was distributed as a "flippy", as were most applications as
> > it became clear that there was no downside (except being able to access
> > only one side at a time--but you could always copy the back to another
> > disk if you needed that).
> 
> I read somewhere that the manufacturer of the disk always coated
> both sides of the disk in equal quality because at this stage of the
> production process it couldn't be determined how the disk was
> later inserted into its jacket.

What I recall hearing is that single-sided disks were double-sided disks 
that had (at least potentially) failed testing on the bottom. Which was 
the side that the Disk ][ drive used.


I suspect that as manufacturing processes improved they would just have 
started filling the boxes with whatever they had, but telling you you 
were SOL if a disk labeled single-sided did fail on the back.

> 
> True or not - I find this explanation quite plausible as I, too, never
> had a "modified to use both sides disk" fail on me.
> 
> That may have changed with 3 1/2" floppies but I doubt it.

I used to routinely used single-sided 3.5s as double-sided disks.