[Coco] 35 track or 40 track floppy drives

[Mathieu Bouchard]

I remember wanting to do direct writes to sectors when I was a kid, and it 
involved using 42 tracks, but it's possible that it wasn't the Tandy drive 
anymore... at some point, my parents bought a Disto drive pair by mail 
(made in Laval, QC), and it's very possible that only the Disto could go 
up to 42 tracks, but I don't really know.

Most if not all floppies (disks) had 42 tracks. I don't remember whether 
any of them were really built with only 35 or something in-between.


Le 2015-07-05 à 11:47:00, George Ramsower a écrit :

>  A long time ago, far, far away I did have one of those "Tandy" 35TSS 
> drives. It just simply would not move the head far enough to get more 
> than just short of 40 tracks. That was a long time ago and I don't 
> remember how many tracks I could squeeze out of it. If memory serves me 
> correctly, I THINK I filed on the limit stop to get that extra track or 
> two I needed......but I'm not real certain on this. It just "sort of" 
> seems that I had to do that. I do remember the spindle was belt driven 
> with the strobe type wheel and a small pot to adj the speed.
>  Darn that seems like... ugh.... a long time ago now. Heck, it could 
> have been a 40 track drive that I tried to increase to a few more 
> tracks. I just don't remember now.
>
>  It seems Tandy was dumping some old drives they got cheap and just set 
> the system up to handle them in those early days. I'm guessing on this!! 
> So don't beat me up if I'm WAY off about it.

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| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC