🚀 go-pugleaf

>Hi All - I want to get some 5.25" floppies.


If you want floppy disks (rather than floppy drives)
how many are you after?

In article <1998Sep11.203439.17347@decus>,
PDP-11 Trainee Guru <geremin@decus.org.au> wrote:
>Hi All - I want to get some 5.25" floppies.
>
>At this stage two types are required but I will take whatever 
>I can get and stock up for the future.
>
>I need 5.25" HD to suit PC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
>
>I need 5.25" SSQD to suit DEC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
>
>For DEC users they are RX33 and RX50 types.

It's not clear whether you are talking about media or the drives, but:

1.  If you want the media, it's all still readily available here in
North America.  DECDirect is selling RX50K's at US$9 for a box of
ten, easily the cheapest price in all of history.  Finding the HD media
is not difficult at all.

2.  If you are looking for drives, I heartily recommend the advice given
in Terry Kennedy's collection THIRD-PARTY-DISKS.TXT, available by
anonymous ftp from ftp.spc.edu.  Lots of useful information on how
to use industry-standard drives in DEC machines.

>I guess I should also offer to take any 8" floppies as well.

Again, readily available in North America.  The best-stocked place
is California Digital (http://www.cadigital.com), which sells both
new media and NOS drives.

Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca)

>PDP-11 Trainee Guru wrote:

> I need 5.25" HD to suit PC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
>
> I need 5.25" SSQD to suit DEC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
>
> For DEC users they are RX33 and RX50 types.

Jerome Fine replies:

If you are willing to spend some time and do the format yourself,
there is a program "PUTR" at:

http://www.dbit.com/pub/putr/

which will do the format providing you have the correct media.

You are correct that the RX33 uses the identical media and
format as the 5.25" HD PC floppy - if it works on the PC
with a 1.2 MByte floppy drive, it will work on the RX33
in the DEC environment.

For the RX50, you will find that you NEED the 5.25" DSDD
floppy (360 KBytes for a PC).  The media is very different
between the two types (RX33 and RX50).  But the format
MUST be done on a 5.25" HD 1.2 MByte floppy on the
PC for the RX50 format.  There were a number of posts
a while back on alt.sys.pdp11 as to why this is necessary.

If you do not have the time (or can't find a PC with a
5.25" HD 1.2 MByte floppy), then you are doomed to
buy the RX50 from DEC.

Incidentally, when I use the word:  "FORMAT", that
refers to the physical low level format required by
the hardware in a DEC environment which is quite
separate from the:  "INITIALIZE  DU0:"  command
which sets up the directory structure in the DEC
environment, as opposed to in the PC environment
in which the "format" command does both or
a "format B: /q" which is only the "initialize".

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
RT-11/TSX-PLUS  User/Addict
Year 2000 Solutions for All RT-11 Applications
(Sources not always required)

shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) writes:

> 
> In article <1998Sep11.203439.17347@decus>,
> PDP-11 Trainee Guru <geremin@decus.org.au> wrote:
> >Hi All - I want to get some 5.25" floppies.
> >
> >At this stage two types are required but I will take whatever 
> >I can get and stock up for the future.
> >
> >I need 5.25" HD to suit PC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
> >
> >I need 5.25" SSQD to suit DEC systems - I will even pay for unused ones.
> >
> >For DEC users they are RX33 and RX50 types.
> 
> It's not clear whether you are talking about media or the drives, but:
> 
> 1.  If you want the media, it's all still readily available here in
> North America.  DECDirect is selling RX50K's at US$9 for a box of
> ten, easily the cheapest price in all of history.  Finding the HD media
> is not difficult at all.

I have a few boxes of the media here in W.A. (I think) Freight across AUS
should be cheeper then from the US

-- 
...BRU

Bruce Cook,  Synonet Corp.	E-Mail: bruce@bicycle.synonet.com
Phone:  +61 147 967 468		Fax: +61 8 9227 7390