Re: Disk ][ Drives not working

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@orcon.net.nz>]

In <r4fFc.74933$E84.50596@edtnps89> Wayne Stewart  wrote:
> 
> Seems unlikely since DD disks have been pretty much the standard disk
> used with the Apple II for the last 20 years. The manufacturers
> stopped making SD disks around 1983. Out of the several thousand disks
> I have, not more than a handful are single density.
> 
> Wayne

Around 1986 I got my first computer, a used Dick Smith Cat a.k.a. Laser 
3000, with a Laser 5.25" floppy drive. I already owned a few floppy 
disks for use with the Apple IIe's at school, and asked my mother to 
pick up another three when she was in town. This was back when a box of 
10 disks was still expensive, especially for a high school student! She 
told the guy at the store which computer they were for and he sold here 
the appropriate disks.

For years afterwards I would occasionally get I/O errors using the Laser 
drive and always blamed the drive. Later I got an Apple IIe and a new 
third-party drive. The random errors continued! One day I was looking at 
one of the disks, and for the first time ever noticed it was a single-
density disk. It finally twigged that all the random errors had been 
happening on the SD disks.

n.b. Both my drives were third-party ones, and the disks might have been 
low-quality too. A Disk II might work fine with SD disks, but I would 
still never use them.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz/
________________________________________________________________________
  No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go?

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