Subj : Re: floppy disks
To   : StormTrooper
From : boraxman
Date : Thu May 01 2025 10:29 am

-=> StormTrooper wrote to boraxman <=-

 bo> Makes sense now.  You manufacture DS disks.  If both sides are bad, bin
 bo> it. If one side is bad, use the other side in a SS disk.  If both pass,
 bo> its a DS disk. Is that how it worked?

 St> I never saw them so I can't add a great deal real info on SS SD.  But
 St> by the time DS DD arrives there's no difference between any of the
 St> physical media. All of it is DD, only one type of media is coming out
 St> of the factory.  You'd QC both sides as part of production, after that
 St> its just sleeving and labels.

When I didn't know much about computers as a youngster, I just assumed a
"double sided" disk was one you could turn over, flip and put in the disc drive
upside down and still use, as with the Commodore 64 disc drive.

So when I got an IBM XT (second hand, old!), imagine my confusion when I find
the disks don't work when you flip them upside down.  Why would the Commodore
1541 be able to use both sides, and the IBM only one side?  Then when I got
1.44M you could only put them in one way, but they were marketed as double
sided!  

I did learn that it writes to both sides at once, but for a while, I assumed
disc drives only write on the upper side.


.... BoraxMan
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