The Sinclair QL Forum

All,

How can you tell DD, HD or ED Floppy Drives apart, without taking the outer casing off to reveal all?

The background is I've got two sets of double floppy drives, one connected to a Trump card, the other connected to another QL floppy interface (So floppy drives are set at DD at present). Now I've got a SGC and want to know whether any of my disk drives can be set to HD, or not.

(I tried to take the cover off one of the disk drives, but I mangled one of the screws that refused to unscrew)

Yours,

Frustrated of Midlothian

If you have an SGC the only way of knowing is to put a HD disk into the drive and FORMAT it

If it formats to 1440/1440 sectors, it is a DD drive
If it formats to 2880/2880 sectors it is HD (or possibly ED)

To test if it is ED, you will need to try formatting an ED drive (should give 6400/6400 sectors).

Miracle did tend to put a label on the bottom of the drive housing (black drives) to say if they were HD or ED, but the grey ones which were from Bill Richardson did not have any indication on them.

There is no other way of knowing, apart from opening the disk drive housing and looking up the model numbers of the disk drives on the internet (if you can find them !)