Date   : Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:15:12 +0100
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: What types of 3.5

It's quite true, the price of 5.25" BBC drives on E-Bay is ridiculous, especially
double drives or combined 3.5"-5.25" drives.  There was a combined drive
on there last week which was an original BBC micro type drive and a standard
PC type 3.5" stuck on top, ie. a home-made affair, which sold for &pound;105!!!!!!

I've been watching these for some time and wondering why I let my spare
Watford & Cumana ones go for "only" &pound;20 each!

Best wishes,


Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: Jules Richardson
To:   bbc-micro@...
Sent:  Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:18:17 +0000
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] What types of 3.5" Floppy work best with the BBCMicro ?

Robin Commander wrote:
> Can't believe the prices that I'm seeing on Ebay for original drives !

For 5.25" or 3.5"? I hear that 8" units are getting pretty pricey these days, 
but I'm surprised there's any shortage of other types resulting in high prices.

> Failing that, would an old DSDD 3.5" drive from say an Atari or Amiga
> external unit work ?

OK, I think you *need* a DSDD unit, don't you? I would have thought that the 
beeb can't cope with the data rate needed for a DSHD drive.

In which case yes, I can't see you having a problem there - I certainly added 
a pair of stock DSDD drives to my Amiga back in the day (I seem to recall 
having to build an interface to do this, but I'm pretty sure that was to get 
around some quirk in the Amiga side of things, rather than some fundamental 
"problem" with the use of PC drives)

> Happy to take a soldering iron to a floppy to make it work if necessary :-)

You shouldn't need to do that :) You might have to mess around with some of 
the drive jumpers though, so give preference to a drive for which the manual's 
available on the 'net (or jumper info exists in Google's news archive), or 
failing that a drive which actually labels its jumpers.

cheers

Jules