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On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:35:37 -0000 "Ray Smith" <rayjsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Has anyone got a working Amstrad PCW with 720K drive ? > > Not usually - Amstrad used their own diskette size (3.0 inch) - > thicker and smaller than 5 1/4. You'd need to have an external > "standard" floppy drive for the Amstrad to have used any normal > diskette. It was the larger Amstrads that had standard 3.5 inch > floppy drives. > > The amstrad 720k machines ran cpm using 3.5 inch disks. It turns out that there were two Amstrad PCW's with 720k, one with a 3.0 inch floppy drive and one with a 3.5 inch floppy drive. The 3.5 inch can be used with an emulator, the 3.0 inch need a custom Amstrad drive. I expected that as Tom was looking for a "working PCW with 720k drive" that he was looking for the 3.0 inch version that I knew from University days. I had my dissertation on a set of 3.0inch Amstrad floppies - the OS was on the floppy in the A: drive and the data on the double density B: drive. Took almost a full day to print! I can't imagine entrusting such important data to something as fragile as a floppy drive now but there was no alternative available to undergraduates at that time. (I'm feeling old!) # The PCW8512 or Joyce Plus (1985) came with 512 kB RAM and two 3-inch # floppy drives, the second of which could store 720 kB on an 80-track # double-density floppy without needing the disk to be turned over. # The PcW9256 (1991) had a modern, smaller case design similar to the # 9512, but had 256 kB RAM, a single 3½-inch 720 kB floppy drive, a # dot-matrix printer, and no parallel port. (Wikipedia) Which disk do you have, Tom? -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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