Detecting Floppy Drives and Media
Detecting floppy drive types and installed media is a far trickier topic than it should have been. In the ideal world, software could determine how many floppy drives are attached, what their...
View ArticleThe XDF Diskette Format
In 1994, IBM started shipping software with support for XDF, or eXtended Density Format, first in OS/2 Warp and a few months later in PC DOS 7.0. Some of IBM’s software packages were also distributed...
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Kids these days…
By sheer accident I stumbled on this document. In summary, it’s about a bunch of school kids working on a computer history preservation project and trying to archive a big box of floppies from George...
View ArticleThe Central Point Backup Floppy Format
A reader recently asked about the “native” format of Central Point Backup (CP Backup) floppies. Diskettes formatted in this manner are somewhat tricky to work with as they do not use a standard DOS...
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Kids These Days, Continued
As the OS/2 museum pointed out, many kids these days don’t really know how to properly use floppies. Fortunately, not all is lost and at least some youngsters know exactly what to do with a 3½”...
View ArticleFloppy Capacity Math
After more or less accidentally coming across a BBS listing of various high-capacity floppy formatting programs, I began wondering: How much data can really be stored on a diskette in a PC floppy...
View ArticleWobbly Floppy Drive?
Over the weekend I tried to revive a PS/2 Model 80 whose CMOS battery died (after 25 years!). Finding a replacement battery fortunately isn’t difficult (6V lithium “photo” battery), but recreating the...
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More Wobbles
This is a follow-up to a previous post. I’ve had a chance to spend more time recovering the two dead PS/2 Model 80s. The first step was replacing the CMOS batteries because without a functioning backup...
View ArticleThere’s Another Possibility
Four years ago we pondered why on Earth a DOS floppy boot sector might start with 69h, supposedly a “direct jump” opcode. Which is the IMUL instruction on 80186 and later, and not documented on 8086....
View ArticleKryofluxing PC Floppies
Last year I finally bought a Kryoflux, unfortunately in the middle of moving house. Now I’m finally able to use it beyond verifying that it’s not completely broken. After imaging a few dozens of...
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Diskette Puzzle
Last week the OS/2 Museum received a classic red NetWare box with all sorts of junk inside: PCI and ISA network cards (most Ethernet, one ArcNET), BNC cabling, one or two manuals, and over a 100...
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Dirty Work
As I’m slowly archiving my giant pile of floppies, I naturally come across specimens that have one kind of problem or another. After going through hundreds of floppies, I can safely say that 3½″...
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