Old Floppy Drive Specifications for Gotek/FlashFloppy

[Tom_Servo]

I'm in the process of configuring a Gotek floppy emulator with FlashFloppy firmware, and am trying to find the specs (heads, cylinders, etc) for the current physical drives in the PC (Alps DFB221A06A, 5-1/4" 360K DS/DD drive). Does anyone know of any repositories/listings for floppy drive specs on the Web? Thanks in advance!

 

[sergey]

Not exactly sure I understand the question.
If I am not mistaken, FlashFloppy will automagically emulate a 360 KB drive, given a 360 KB image (I should try it when I get home).
But otherwise the specifications for IBM PC floppy disk formats are:

Disk Size	Sectors per track	Tracks	Heads / sides	Notes
5.25"/160 KB	8	40	1	IBM PC/XT, single side disks
5.25"/180 KB	9	40	1	IBM PC/XT, single side disks; MS-DOS 2.0 or later
5.25"/320 KB	16	40	2	IBM PC/XT, double side disks; PC DOS 1.1 or later
5.25"/360 KB	18	40	2	IBM PC/XT, double side disks; MS-DOS 2.0 or later
3.5"/720 KB 5.25"/720 KB (not common*)	18	80	2	PS/2 Model 25, PS/2 Model 30, IBM PC/XT can also support this format. MS-DOS 3.2 or later *There are 5.25"/720 KB disk drives, and they will work with IBM PC/XT too, but they never were supplied with the original IBM systems, and were not popular with IBM compatibles It is possible to format and use 5.25"/360 KB disks as 720KB disks in 5.25"/1.2 MB drives, see 800.COM below
5.25"/800 KB	10	80	2	800.COM or similar utilities, allowed fitting more data on cheaper DS/DD diskettes using 5.25"/1.2 MB drive
5.25"/1.2 MB	15	80	2	IBM AT, MS-DOS 3. 0 or later
3.5"/1.44 MB	18	80	2	IBM PS/2, MS-DOS 3.3 or later
3.5"/1.68 MB 3.5"/1.72 MB	21	80 82	2	DMF, used by Microsoft for distributing some software
3.5"/2.88 MB	36	80	2	Later IBM PS/2. Also supported by many newer 486+ motherboards with on-board FDC, wasn't popular

 

[Tom_Servo]

Sergey - thanks for the information. The issue I'm having looks like a bad disk image conversion - the Gotek can retrieve data from the USB stick/disk image, but running DIR for instance gives a looooong string of zeros down the middle of the screen, several beeps from the speaker, a partially garbled listing of the files on the image, and some extraneous characters. Trying to run any of the files - even extremely small ones - gives a "not enough memory" error. I can run files directly off the conventional floppy drive without issue. I've pulled disk images from a number of online sources, and all seem to have the same problem.

The computer is a Panasonic Senior Partner portable - it's an RL-H7000WB model with dual floppies. I'm booting MS-DOS 1.0 from the conventional floppy on drive A, and have the Gotek set up as the B drive.

The maddening thing about it is that it's seeing "most" of the data, but the format is slightly off. I'm going to try reflashing the Gotek and see if that resolves the issue. Any other ideas are welcome!

 

[jxm]

@Tom_Servo you did not indicate what size disk image you are trying to access on the gotek. Given you are using MS-DOS 1.0 and looking at the table sergey provided and looking at MS-DOS 1.0 disk limitation info from here it seems you need to be using a 160KB image.

You would need to move to a later version of DOS to access 360KB images. Having said that though I wonder how DOS 1.0 is booting on the phsyical 360KB drive. Are you able to access A: without error.

Unless you are changing the Gotek image I doubt reflashing the same image will resolve anything.

 

[tradde]

I agree re-flashing it not likely to fix anything. Since we don't know the specs needed for this disk it's likely just a minor setting change to make this work.

 

[Tom_Servo]

Thanks to sergey, tradde and jxm - downloaded a 160KB image and worked like a charm - thanks! I've never worked with DOS 1x before, and didn't even realize there was a 160KB format out there - my first IBM compatible had 360KB drives. Thanks again!