Hi Mr B-o-B!

You didn't say what kind of drives you are looking for; 3.5" high
density, 3.5" standard density, 5.25" high density, 5.25" standard
density 80 track or 40 track, double sided or single sided, or 8" high
density, low density, hard sector, soft sector, or Vydeck.

I will say that if this is for a disk duplication project where you
will be using 3.5" or 5.25" HD drives, you have the best chance of
success. If you are doing anything that requires making both 5.25" HD
disks and 5.25" 360K low density disks, you should plan to have two
sets of 5.25" drives because the track read-write width was different
between 360K low density 40 track and 1.2MB high density 80 track.

Chances are good you will not be using 8" drives, but if you do, there
used to be software that would let you read 8" drives on your PC if
you made your own control cable. It has been too many years to
remember now but I know there was something about the old PC floppy
disk controllers that made me buy a special controller card to get
full capability for reading odd disk formats. Linux might even be the
ideal OS for this kind of work since you can probably do anything you
want with the right drivers.

The final recommendation would be that you consider your options for
proving the drives are good. I know that I've had good drives and bad
drives over the years. Good drives usually had a bit better read-write
head and electronics that gave a bit more margin on read. Bad drives
had less margin and tended to give more read errors with marginal
floppy disks, particularly when you get into high density media.

And if you have 8 random drives from different vendors and manufacture
dates, you probably have 8 drives with different physical alignment of
the heads and no two the same. This tends to show up as difficulty
reading a test disk, particularly on the inner tracks where data bits
are packed the tightest on the media. I used to test my PC drives by
formatting disks on each of them, then doing a surface scan of the
disks as I swapped them between the other drives. Then I'd try to make
sense of which drives had read errors on which floppies. The "keeper"
drives were the ones that had no errors reading each other's disks
since I could reasonably assume they had similar alignment and good
read margin.

30 years ago in the TRS-80 days, I had 3.5", 5.25", and 8" floppy
drive alignment disks where I worked and I frequently aligned the
floppy drives when they were returned to the shop. I haven't seen
anyone selling alignment disks for along time now, and since 3.5" and
5.25" drives are common as sand, I don't know that I'd bother with it
today. Easier just to get a couple more drives and test them as above.

And if you are duplicating floppies, be sure to pay attention to
getting quality media. The cheaper disks are usually cheaper for a
reason. Anyone who fought with 5.25" HD media knows that very well.
The worst media I ever saw was at a three letter government agency and
came from the lowest bidder. When you held it to the light and looked
at the shiny surface, it looked like it had freckles. Each freckle was
a high spot on the media that had been scraped off when the head went
by and coated the read head like frost on your windshield on a cold
winter morning. The build-up on the head reduced read margin until the
drive couldn't read anything!

If you can't collect enough old drives from the TClug list, you might
want to put a Want on Craig's List or simply pick up some of the
Free-haul-it-away computers on the list. Worst case I can give you the
email address for a guy who scraps old computers as his business, but
he might be the worst place to look since most of his scrap comes from
companies that got rid of 5.25" drives 15-20 years ago.

<www.twinslan.net>
If none of the above pans out, your last option might be the local
hamfest (electronic swap meet, flea market) on June 7 in St Paul near
3M Center. You'd have a pretty good chance of collecting a dozen
drives out there, although 5" drives are getting pretty old even for
hams...... I gave half a dozen old computers and drives to the
scrapper last fall. I might have a few more drives if I look and knew
what you wanted.  :-)

Doug Reed.


On 4/20/14, tclug-list-request at mn-linux.org
<tclug-list-request at mn-linux.org> wrote:
> Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:58:53 -0500
> From: B-o-B De Mars <mr.chew.baka at gmail.com>
> To: TCLUG <tclug-list at mn-linux.org>
> Subject: [tclug-list] Need 8 floppy drives
>
> I am in need of as many old floppy drives that I can get my hands on.
> The magic # I am looking for is 8, but would be interested in more.
> I will give cash, or trade.
> If anyone still has a pile of these drives collecting dust let me know.
> Thanks!
>
> Mr. B-o-B