Anyone ever heard of this?

[DavidMil]

Saw this on EBAY and was wondering if anybody had used/heard anything like this.

 

DavidMil

[+MrFish]

Greaseweazle new DIY open source alternative to Kryoflux and SCP

 

[CraigsBar]

Yes, I have one, bought it from Keir Fraser directly. The same guy who makes the FlashFloppy gotek firmware. I've not tried it on a8 discs yet, as I don't have a 5.25inch floppy drive..... Or any Atari 8 bit discs! But it works perfectly on CPC, cpm, pcw, Amiga, Sam coupe, spectrum and BBC disc formats so I expect it'll be fine on the Atari too.

[Peri Noid]

I have one. A different version - but works the same. I copied Atari disks without problems. You just have to use a DD drive to save the data. If you use an HD drive instead, a standard Atari drive will have problems reading them. Been there, tested that.

[cwilbar]

I would imagine if the target disk was bulk erased then written with a 1.2M drive (appropriately double stepped for writing a 360K), it would likely work in an Atari..... however, I prefer using 360K drives.  As Atari 8bits did not do half tracks, there is nothing to be gained by using a 1.2M drive for imaging, except perhaps if there is a disk that is magnetically damaged, possibly a 1.2 could pick up a good read for a sector on the right half track read....

 

 

[BillC]

On 10/14/2021 at 9:38 AM, cwilbar said:

I would imagine if the target disk was bulk erased then written with a 1.2M drive (appropriately double stepped for writing a 360K), it would likely work in an Atari..... however, I prefer using 360K drives.  As Atari 8bits did not do half tracks, there is nothing to be gained by using a 1.2M drive for imaging, except perhaps if there is a disk that is magnetically damaged, possibly a 1.2 could pick up a good read for a sector on the right half track read....

The greaseweazle software has the option to erase a disk, so it might be possible to do this with a 360KB drive instead of using a bulk eraser.

 

I believe only 1.2MB mechanisms have been used for no-flip modifications, or at least are far more common, probably because they allow dumping any disc format instead of only 48TPI/40 track. A second index hole in the disk jacket also allows dumping side B, but isn't that common.

[_The Doctor__]

1.2MB solutions I believe use a different material for the disk... this was discussed previously, it's generally a bad idea

[cwilbar]

While not stating it, I was referring to writing 360K drives with 1.2M mechanisms in my post.  And yes, especially with 5.25", the HD media is not safe to use a 360K, and 360K media is not safe to try to format to 1.2M.  As I understand it 3.5" HD and DD media are closer in magnetic properties than 360K and 1.2M media, and I've heard you can use 1.44M HD 3.5" disks formatted to 720K.  (Back in the PS/2 days in college, the PS/2 would write 1.44M format to 720K floppies....  I used to do that all the time as I could put more on a disk ? ).