ED diskettes...

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Pr0f
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ED diskettes...

Post by Pr0f »

I aquired a ps/2 drive yesterday - which needs some reworking of the cable to make it work with a QL interface supporting such drvies - but I was looking through my large stash of floppies and it appears i have foolishly let my box of ED diskettes go along with my gold card some time ago.

Does anyone have some for sale? I have seen what I consider to be silly prices on ebay for a single disk, but it maybe they are really that rare...

No massive urgency as I haven'y yet soldered the disk controller to anything that would allow me to test it yet, although I could test this on a PC I suppose.


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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by RWAP »

They are very hard to find now but I have some in stock for £3 each:

https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/detai ... d%29-31983

If you only need a couple for testing purposes I have some second hand ones for £1 each (plus postage) - although I have no idea what state they are in as I don't have the means to test them myself!


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Pr0f
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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by Pr0f »

Many thanks Richard - I will have to have a good look there after lunch - that's a much more reasonable price.

I wasn't going to look at floppies, but it seemed to be a good choice to make that interface available on my build, as it's a 1 chip solution (not including rom or decoding). The chip I found does everything the chip on the gold card does, but requires not external filter caps. It also supports all the enhanced floppy stuff - not that there is any QL software around to make use of that I don't think.


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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by RWAP »

Pr0f wrote:It also supports all the enhanced floppy stuff - not that there is any QL software around to make use of that I don't think.
What is the "enhanced floppy stuff" ?


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Pr0f
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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by Pr0f »

RWAP wrote:
Pr0f wrote:It also supports all the enhanced floppy stuff - not that there is any QL software around to make use of that I don't think.
What is the "enhanced floppy stuff" ?
I'm glad you asked - I have no idea ! :-) (well not much of an idea) Still trying to find out exactly what this is and what it does. I know that PS/2 models in the later years had some funky extras in the floppy drives like electronic eject from software, locking the drive to prevent eject or prevent loading a floppy into the drive. I believe there was also some media id detection stuff, but I am not sure if that was just basic looking at the 2 density hole switches and reporting back the capability of the media in the drive or if it was more advanced than that. The standard PC/AT inteface makes no provision for these, it's left to the drive to handle.


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Dave
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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by Dave »

Looks like if I just hold onto these unopened ED boxes a bit longer, I'll have my retirement sorted. :D


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NormanDunbar
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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by NormanDunbar »

RWAP wrote:They are very hard to find now but I have some in stock for £3 each:

https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/detai ... d%29-31983

If you only need a couple for testing purposes I have some second hand ones for £1 each (plus postage) - although I have no idea what state they are in as I don't have the means to test them myself!
Maybe, just maybe - but I doubt it after all this time - these are the ones I sent you ages ago? If so, they were brand new and unformatted.

If not mine, then just pretend I'm not here! ;)

Cheers,
Norm.


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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by RWAP »

NormanDunbar wrote: Maybe, just maybe - but I doubt it after all this time - these are the ones I sent you ages ago? If so, they were brand new and unformatted.

If not mine, then just pretend I'm not here! ;)
Hi Norm,

These second hand ones are not the ones you sent - as they have labels and did have data on them at some point :D


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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by NormanDunbar »

Ok Rich, thanks.

Cheers,
Norm.


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Pr0f
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Re: ED diskettes...

Post by Pr0f »

Many thanks Richard, the disks arrived today :-)


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