9 Mar
2024
9 Mar
'24
7:08 a.m.
"David W. Jones" <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> writes:
A search found these:
https://www.micropolis.com/support/kb/5.25-inch-floppy-disk
"Earlier Micropolis floppy disk drives ("MegaFloppy") extended
Shugart's standard of 48 tpi (tracks per inch) and increased track
count to 77 tracks on a disk, and, with 100 TPI track density, doubled
the available storage on a disk. This Micropolis format was
effectively a 1:1 scaled-down version of an 8-inch disk."
https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1102
Looks like it's a higher-capacity 5.25" floppy drive. Maybe standard
floppy disks will work. But it sees you might need a Megafloppy drive
in your computer to read/write them to use the extended capacity.
I've seen that info but no, that is just a naming clash. This drive
here has SCSI and "Floppy out" connectors and is there for extending a
device using a floppy (like in this case an arranger) to employ a SCSI
hard disk. Since it is wired up via the standard MFM floppy bus, it
will not end up significantly faster than the floppy, just more
convenient.
The curious thing is that I don't see how this arranger would even fit a
SCSI drive inside (and there is none connected as it is), so it would be
interesting what possible other functionality this drive could be good
for to make someone go to this kind of expense.
The connection to MIDI In of the arranger likely is not a MIDI output
but a MIDI input, probably allowing "floppy changes" to be initiated by
a MIDI sequencer via commands that the arranger itself ignores.
I'll likely end up replacing this by a Gotek. Slightly less versatile
since it doesn't contain an actual floppy drive as well, but convenient
enough. Without a SCSI drive (and without second floppy) connected, the
Megafloppy will likely not be significantly different from a normal
1.44MB drive. But even unused old media for those drives have a very
spotty record of working (namely being writeable with new information)
for me, so that isn't much of a loss.
--
David Kastrup