• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

magneto-optical media compatibility..

chelseayr

Well-known member
I'm somewhat glad that the zip thread preceded the 'feburary glitch'
(at https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/iomega-zip-drive-media-compatibility.37318/ if anyone wanted to ask)

but now I just wanted to recheck on another group of medias...

I know that 90mm and 130mm clearly have no crosscompatibility literally...
but that aside, I presume that downward capacity reading compatibility is generally always present so a 2.3gb drive could read even a 128mb media?
and would above also be related or not related to the assumption of using well known 'pure' (as in not rebadge etc) drive brands like fujitsu for example?
 

Nathan_A

Well-known member
Yes, typically. I've replaced the FDD drives in some of my machines with small-format MO drives. It's been a great way to move files around between machines with varying capacities for connectivity to each other for one reason or another. Older style FDD slots that lack the detent in the middle are a little tricky to get aligned so that the little MO disks don't rub or snag on the case since they're thicker than a floppy, but generally speaking it's a great experience compared to fiddling with Jaz drives/disks and constantly burning CDs.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
I have numerous magneto optical drives in the 3.5" (90mm) variety. They all work with the media they are made for, and below. In other words, the 640MB drive works with 640MB, 540MB, 230MB, and 128MB media. A 1.3GB drive works with everything the 640MB drive does, and adds 1.3GB media support. The 2.3GB, same thing, and adds 2.3GB media support.

So a 2.3GB 90mm drive will work with all media designed for the 90mm drives.
 

chelseayr

Well-known member
mm nathan I didn't think of that someone could stealthly swap the disk drive for a MO drive but thats indeed an interesting doing

of course I can imagine perhaps having to warn any computer guests that there is not an actual disk drive in the system tho (unless you perhaps had one of these rare dual-media drive, I think it was philips who made this wasn't it? I know I had saw some ads in the scanlet of old magazines but just can't recall more right now)
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
I do believe that the 230 MB variety are technically a non-standard format, but I haven't run into any issues. According to Wikipedia, the larger 9.1 GB 5.25" (130mm) drives only have write capability down to 2.3 GB disks, but they can still read the 1.3 GB and smaller disks. So if you some of the smaller 5.25" disks, it might be worth having an older 5.25" drive in addition to a newer one.
 
Top