Table of Contents
Advertisement
4.1
FLOPPY DRIVE TEST
FLOPPY SUBSYSTEM
The floppy subsystem is made up of two units: the floppy controller board which
resides in the S-100 bus and the floppy disk drives, which can number up to
four in a system.
The power is supplied by DC cables which connect to all of
the drives and by an AC cable which is used only on the 8" full width drives.
The data is transferred by a ribbon cable that connects all of the floppy drives to
the controller board.
The 8" drives are available in two different sizes, either full width or half
width.
The width describes the physical space that the drive takes up in the
system.
The full width drive is approximately 4.5 inches wide, while the half
width is 2.25 inches wide.
The full width drives use the AC line voltage to
power the spindle motor.
The half width drives use 24V DC for the spindle
motor.
The same test software can be used for both the full and the half width
drives.
Some specific parmeters can change, however.
See Appendix A for more
details.
The 8" drives are also available in single or double sided models.
The number of
sides is determined by the number of read-write heads in the drive.
A double
sided drive can read both single and double sided diskettes, while a single sided
drive can only read single sided diskettes.
Disk errors can occur if a double
sided diskette is placed in a single sided drive.
The diskette label will generally
indicate which type of diskette it is.
The 5" drives are also available in full and half width sizes.
All of the 5" drives
are DC powered.
The 5" drives can be either single or double sided.
Another
option found only on the 5" drives is the availability of quad density format.
D ensi ty refers to the amount of data that can be contained on the diskette.
The
8" floppy drives can read and write in either single or double density, with
double density being the norm.
The 5" floppy drives can read either single or
double density.
These drives are known as 48 tpi drives.
An available option on
the 5" system is a quad drive (also known as 96 tpi drive).
This drive will write
twice as much data on the diskette as the 48 tpi drive.
In running the test
software, the type of drive (48 or 96 tpi) must be specified.
THE FLOPPY TEST PROGRAM
To start the floppy drive test, type TSTF930
<CI),
and the following menu
will appear.
IMS International
PROG.
10:
TSTF930
Floppy Disk Test Utility
Rev 1.1
··5" Floppies··
For 5", 48 T.P.I. drive(s), type: 1
For 5", 96 T.P.I. drive(s}, type: 2
•• 8
11
Floppies··
For 8", 48 T.P.I. drive(s}, type: 3
?
IMS International
S
00 0 Series Microcomputer s/7.0l.83/pag e
108
Advertisement
Table of Contents
