#21MB Floptical Drive
20 messages in this thread
Help!
I have a Macintosh LC which I purchased a 21 Meg Floptical drive for
by PLI (Peripheral Land Inc.). I also have an Amiga 2000 with a Dataflyer
SCSI card, and a 52 Meg Seagate hard drive. I had a cable special made
through Redmond Cable to allow me to hook up the 21 Meg Floptical to my
Amiga. My SCSI card recognizes the device as I have it set at 5 in the
chain. Unfortunately, I do not have the software to run the drive on my
Amiga. I know that it is available because I've seen advertisements for the
drive in AmigaWorld for the last few months. I have made dozens of phone
calls to no avail. So far, I know that two kinds of 20 Meg Floptical
devices are made, Briar and Insite. I have been told the two drives' media
are not compatable with one another. I'm just interested in the software I
need to connect the drive to my Amiga. If it is possible that some
shareware program is available to do this, I would appreciate someone
telling me where I could get it from.
The drive mechanism I have is from Insite. After two weeks of calling
around, I think Insite is the most abundant mechanism. Thanks to anyone who
can help me.
Please E-mail me at 76470,2564.
Have you tried using CrossDos from Consultron? It proports support for the
flopticals… in fact, Consultron sells floptical systems. Why not give
them a call? 313-459-7271
I'm still waiting for my floptical drive to arrive but – I think that Amiga
DOS handles it just like a removable media hard drive. I also have a 44meg
Syquest and anticipate setting up the floptical in a similar way. So that
you don't trash disks when changing them make sure that they are all
partitioned and formatted the same with the hard disk tool kit that is part
of the 2.0 operating system. Since the floptical is a SCSI device it should
not need any special sofware drivers to be used by AmigaDos. I could be
wrong since I have not tried yet. Hope this helps.
Patrick
As the owner of a Syquest already, what made you buy a floptical too?
I need a good excuse 🙂
–Paul Still on AutoPilot
Paul, Syquest carts are expensive, flopticals are more compact, I need to
write MSDOS data in chuncks larger than 700K, and I find I use my syquest
as another drive rather than a backup device. So now I have even more data
to backup.
Floptical disks are rather expensive right now but are supposed to be in
the $10 range soon.
Patrick
No.. CrossDOS is just for using 1.44MB HD disks on the Insite drive
(unless you have some perverse preference for MS-DOS over FFS on
flopticals). The Insite should run straight off the SCSI device.
-Chris
Chris- right…. I was thinking of msdos formatted disks (which wasn't
the question…opps)… btw, I beleive that CrossDos will also read/write
those 1.88 meg msdos flopticals.
CrossDos will read and write all MS-DOS formatted disks. It will not
format harddisks or things with "odd" formats because the license fee for
the FDISK portions of the disk is apparently ruinous and Consultron cannot
afford to pay them. So format and partition disks on an MS-DOS machine if
you want to use them on MS-DOS and Amiga machines if they are other than
standard floppies.
{@_@}
Joanne,
I've heard that its possible to use CrossDos to format a SyQuest…not
true?
Jonathan
Jonathan, via AutoPilot // Only Amiga makes
\\// it possible…
"btw, I beleive that CrossDos will also read/write those 1.88 meg msdos
flopticals."
Never heard of such a beast.. You mean 1.44meg HD disks?
-Chris
Whoops, mixing media in that sentence… meant the 1.88 meg floppies (but
had the 10 & 21 meg flopticals on the brain).
"1.88 meg floppies"
Still never heard of it. Are you talking MSDOS or AmigaDOS? I thought the
AmigaDOS 2MB HD disks formatted out to 1.7MB whereas MSDOS 2MB disks
format to 1.44. And then there are the new 4MB floppies (which format to
2.88MB under MSDOS).. I don't think the floptical can deal with these 4MB
disks yet. Gee, I guess we'll have to settle for 21MB ;^)
-Chris
Chris:
I'm confusing the heck out of myself now… I remember reading something
about an larger capacity floppy for msdos machines that CrossDos could
handle, but I'm out of town right now and can't check it out until
tomorrow… When I get home, I'll check it out and post a msg with the
correct info… sorry for all the confusion <sigh> and for pointing my
mis-statements out!
well , a matter of fact these drives were aimed at the IBM market,and they
support the 720k,1,44 and the 21MB (as per their tech support). But they
are workink on the 40MB which will be release in a year time frame. Bye
Michel
Mike and Chris,
What is the going mail-order cost for flopticals in packs of ten?
–Paul Still on AutoPilot
Paul… I really have no idea, as I don't have a fploptical drive… Miek
Schiller used to some Konica drives… maybe he has a lead on some
flopticals.
I just ordered 3 flopticals from DMI.. still $20 apiece. Don't know about
volume pricing.. I'll have a total of 10 disks when the 3 new ones come
in.
-Chris
No such floppy…..there are, however, 2.88 meg floppies extra high density
their called….I don't know if cross-dos can read them…but I do know a
normal or dual-speed amiga drive can't.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers 908-541-4214 – via Whap!
OK… just to clarify:
Cross-Dos will read/write data on regular Amiga floppy drives, the new HD
Amiga floppy drive, in both 720K and 1.44 meg formats, as well as the 20
meg msdos and Amiga floptical drives.
The lterature I have does not mention any support for the new msdos 2.88
meg floppy's.
Derek,
I have an Insite floptical and it works straight off of my A3000 SCSI
connector. I simply used HDToolbox to read-in the drive's parameters,
low-level format, then partition the drive. After partitioning, a simple
"format drive idh0: name bigstuff ffs quick" did the trick. The
format,partition,format steps must be made with each flopitcal diskette.
I think the key is in using whatever format/partitioning program that was
provided with your DataFlyer.
-Chris