07.002 Can I use high-density 3.5" and 5.25" diskettes on my Apple II?
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This article is from the Apple II Csa2 FAQ, by Jeff Hurlburt with numerous contributions by others.
07.002 Can I use high-density 3.5" and 5.25" diskettes on my Apple II?
I did some magnetization tests on Double Density (800kB) and High Density
(1.4MB) diskette surfaces. The tested DD surface produced more than twice the
deflection of the tested HD surface. Clearly, there is a big difference in
signal levels required to reliably store data on HD vs. DD.
In fact, 5.25" HD (1.2MB) diskettes will not work at all on Apple Disk ]
[ drives. The 3.5" HD's may work fine on your 800k drives; or, they may just
seem to work fine. Either way, there's no question: a drive optimized for DD
will not be optimized for HD. If you'd rather not 'roll the dice' on your
software collection, stick with Double Density diskettes.
By: Rubywand, George Rentovich, Mad ATARI user alternate, Joel
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