Mounting 800k floppies from the 80s

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Level 1

4 points

Mounting 800k floppies from the 80s

Hi, everyone. I have a small trove of 800k floppy discs with archival material from the late 1980s that I'd love to get access to. I've borrowed a USB LaCie Floppy Disc reader ( http://goo.gl/OI5Zv), and connected to my Dual-Core Intel Xeon (OSX 10.6.5) it seems to read HD floppies just fine (1.4mb), but not the old 800k's. I hear the drive starting to access the disks and then it just stops. After insertion, the disks don't show up in Disc Utility, by the way.

So is there some software I'm missing? Is this is a compatibility issue between, for example, ancient HFS and how it's done today? Is it a USB issue? Any patch or workaround to get access to these files?

Any help would be appreciated!

2x3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Feb 11, 2011 8:09 AM

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Answer 1

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

22,207 points

Feb 11, 2011 9:18 AM in response to MattGiraud

Hi,

The Macintosh floppy drives had a variable speed design that allowed 800K to be used on DSDD/2DD diskettes. A PC floppy drive would allow 720K maximum.

Although an external USB floppy drive typically can read/write 720K PC-formatted disks, it cannot handle the special 800K Mac format.

You would need an older (approx. 1991-1997) Macintosh computer with a built-in (800K and 1.44 MB) drive in order to copy the contents of the 800K disks onto 1.44 MB HD diskettes.

Jan

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Answer 2

Feb 11, 2011 9:16 AM in response to MattGiraud

Hi, Matt -

No modern USB drive or software can read the variable-speed, 800k disks. You really need an older Mac or a friend with an older Mac - any one with a built-in floppy drive will do. Also see this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10450084

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Answer 3

MattGiraud Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 11, 2011 11:01 AM in response to MattGiraud

Thanks to both of you for your quick responses. I really appreciate it, and I'll try to dig up an old Mac!

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Answer 4

Feb 15, 2011 9:50 PM in response to MattGiraud

If you ever have occasion to go to Seattle, RE-PC has older Macs. It has been a while since we visited Portland so I cannot speak for current used mac locations there.

Jim

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