I would be generally hopeful that your collection of disks from back in the day should be fine.squishmusic wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:55 pmHi. You make some valid points here and tbh I think they were a mix of branded and non-branded.
I also since reading online see there is a difference/issues around using 720kb and 1.44MB ones as well as HD or DD. I'll have to inspect them all now. Hopefully the belt repair will be the fix...I'll be gutted to lose 90% of my music :/
They were written by your Synth or the MDF2 which would BOTH have had "proper" DD Drives -
so they would have been FULL track height.
Difficulties normally appear when the HD-Drive-equipped PC is included in the loop - for reasons I've explained previously.
I believe that HD Drives have a physical sensor which "looks" for the presence, or absence of the extra hole
found on HD Media, and configures the drive accordingly.
As HD Drives (and their Media) became more common, users used to tape over the extra hole in the HD disks to
FOOL the drive into thinking it was DD Media . .
The problem with THIS is that the Magnetic media itself is HD - and writing currents in a DD Drive are not generally
strong enough to write successfully. With lower quality media - it MAY work, but is NOT reliable - so NOT recommended . .
Similarly, you USED to be able to buy a PUNCH, that would punch that second hole in DD Media -
to convince the Drive that it was a HD DISK - Again, not to be recomended and not reliable.
again, variable quality in the media may work - for no very good reason.
You can only be sure of a SUCCESSFUL Operation when you write a file to disk AND CAN READ IT BACK SUCCESSFULLY

ANOTHER thing to remember is that the FAT filing system used is very old . . . .
Directories are NOT supported, and file names should be 8.3 ie nnnnnnnn.nnn (name + extension)
Midi files for instance - are nnnnnnnn.X01 to .X99 Lettering should be upper case.
The system WILL allow you to have TWO files ending in .X03 (for instance) on a Disk, BUT only the FIRST ONE
will show in a listing of the Disk.
There may be other Caveats too, NO Spaces in Names perhaps - I can't remember
When the PC is introduced, it WILL of course allow lower case letters . . . . .something to watch . . . .
SysEx dumps from device to device should be fine - so I'm thinking bad disks, bad belt or dirty head . . .
Data speed should not be an issue between devices of similar age . . (IMO)
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