8 inch floppy disk

[Frankie]

Ever since I saw WarGames I wanted an 8 inch floppy drive. I realize I have no practical use for it, but still. I have an ATR8000 on the way. Is there a particular drive I should try and find that works with it? Are cables standard?

 

Frank

[archeocomp]

Congrats:-) I have one NOS YeData 8" DS/DD, 1MB, but unfortunatelly on the other side of Atlantic.

[+skr]

I have a bunch of 8" disks, even one box still plastic wrapped. Would love to have a drive to use them, too.

My Sally has "only" two 5.25" HD-Drives.

[Frankie]

Does anyone know if this would work with the right cable

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/333590636366

[archeocomp]

To me it looks as standard Shugart 50 pin connector. But this particular drive is VERY slow to step from track to track. Maybe the slowest one. I would look for some Japanese drives. YE DATA 180, 174, Mitsubishi-M2896 and similar. QumeTrak 242 seems to be identical to YE Data. These drives have track to track time 3ms. Compare it with German BASF, SIEMENS drives with 25ms..

Edited May 9, 2020 by archeocomp

[ACML]

I know you want the physical 8" drive, but the next best thing is a 1.2Mb 5.25" floppy.  The ATR-8000 using MyDOS can format them as a 1MB 77 track DSDD disk, just like the 8" standard.

 

[Gavin1968]

On 5/9/2020 at 10:04 AM, Frankie said:

I have an ATR8000 on the way.

Where did you get it?? I want one! I can't believe I must have tossed my out many years ago but would love to get another one. 

 

[Frankie]

2 hours ago, Gavin1968 said:

Where did you get it?? I want one! I can't believe I must have tossed my out many years ago but would love to get another one. 

 

eBay. I had a search/alert setup so I got an email when one was listed.

 

[_The Doctor__]

Speaking of disks

My woman played with my 8 inch floppy, I explained and showed her the difference between floppy, flexible, and hard... we both agreed that hard was best and put it to immediate use.

 

Now to explain how Multi In/Out helps the hard ones interface so we can play more games. :)

[andymanone]

After moving my ATARI storage last year, I also recovered two 8 inch Radio Shack TRS-80 Floppys...

The difference between 8, 5,25 and 3,5 is phenomenal ?

 

Gtx.,

andY

[TGB1718]

I found some old 8" disks in a box, it has "ZORK" on one and my saved games on the other.

 

Used to play it on a Marconi System 80 in-circuit tester back in the 80's, using RT-11 OS.

I remembered the joy when we upgraded to a massive 10MB hard drive, those were the days.

 

Had use of the departments printers for my 130XE too :))

[archeocomp]

When I answered local classifieds few years ago, that lady selling 8" floppies replied to me . . do you really want to buy it ???