What kind of disks does my Disk ][ use?

[redrouteone]

So I picked up an Apple IIe with a Disk ][ from the local Goodwill.

I want to buy some disks to use, but my google-fu is failing me. I seem to recall that it requires hard sectored disks, but then again my memory is known to contain errors.

 

[luddite]

Any DSDD (Double-sided, double-density) disks should work.

 

[david__schmidt]

Any DSDD (Double-sided, double-density) disks should work.

Exactly. Sectored-ness (hard or soft) is irrelevant in the Apple's case. Just avoid HD ('High Density") disks.

 

[Mars478]

And also this may be unecessary but they have to be 5 1/4' diskettes.

 

[II2II]

they have to be 5 1/4' diskettes

Those are awfully big diskettes. }

Yeah, I know. A typo.

 

[Mars478]

Oops 5 1/4"

 

[redrouteone]

Thanks, guys.

Question then comes down to. What I am thinking of that requires hard sectored disks.

 

[david__schmidt]

Question then comes down to. What I am thinking of that requires hard sectored disks.

I can't imagine what you're thinking of. ;-) Hard sectoring refers to holes in the disk surface detected by optics to signify tracks and sectors. The Apple Ii scheme makes no use of these holes, and so is called "soft sectored." It's all encoded on the disk surface itself (i.e. in software - encoded on the disk) instead of being measured physically.

 

[Dog Cow]

It's also how you can use both sides of a single-sided disk. Double-sided disks for all other computers have two index holes. This is why when you get a disk which has IBM and Apple versions of the same program, the Apple version is always on the back. The Apple doesn't use any of the holes, except for the large circular, and the oval-shaped one!

 

[Nathan]

This kind --> http://floppydisks.com/items.php?itm=7&pgnum=1

 

[Osgeld]

hm that is the same price i see everywhere, but at a lower minimum quantity, thanks

 

[Nathan]

Yeah? That company seems to have an index.html site and an index.php site (the one I listed), it's a little confusing. If you ever try buying some disks from them, let me know how it goes. After all, $1 a disk for old stuff like that isn't bad at all. Wish I could find the PC 5.25" drive my parents still had as long as 4 or 5 years ago as they have a fair stack of 5 1/4 disks that are probably IBM formatted.

 

[Osgeld]

aye I bought a thrift store pc for a buck for its 5.25 so I can backup some of my old dos games

 

[barana]

I seem to recall that it requires hard sectored disks

Some trs80's required hard sector disks.

I just bought 50 dd 3.5in floppies off them.... $75aud...

 

[Gorgonops]

Some trs80's required hard sector disks.

No TRS-80 used hard sector disks. (Speaking here as a former owner of examples of both the Model I/III/IV and Color Computer lines. Single hole soft-sector *only*.) Note that some Apple/Commodore-type people, whose computers don't use the index hole at all and could work with either kind of media, confuse systems which use the (single) index hole in a "soft-sector" diskette as being "hard sectored". A true hard-sector disk has numerous holes spaced around the disk medium marking every physical sector boundary. Soft-sector systems just use the single hole to synchronize the "starting line" for each track.

Honestly I've only seen hard sector disks in the wild twice. Once was on a Heathkit H89, the other was on a *very early* dedicated word-processor/typewriter thing called "QYX", made by Exxon's long-dead office products division. (I actually owned the latter, saved from a garbage can. About the only reference to it I can find on the Internet is a passing mention in a Popular Mechanics article about the history of typewriters.) Hardly anything beyond the Altair/IMSAI/S-100 era used them. (And in many cases the old systems using them were upgraded with newer controllers to eliminate the need for them later in their lives.)

It's practically impossible to buy hard-sectored diskettes anymore, so really it's sort of a theoretical argument. If you have a system that needs them you'd better have already stocked up around 1983 or so. (Well, okay, I found a joint selling them for $14 each. OMG!)

EDIT: A mailing list post detailing a HOWTO for making your own hard-sectored disks out of soft-sector blanks. Reading it should make the difference more clear.