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Question regarding floppies

Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:41 pm
by Chema
In order to decide if my new game Blake's 7 will support 3" disks, I need to know if most of the Oric 3" disk drives were single sided (you had to manually flip the disc to get to the other side, such as with Amstrad computers) or not (they had two heads).

Please answer the poll and/or leave any comments you wish.

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:07 pm
by Chema
I will burn in Hell for not being able to ask a simple question without setting a context in which you could mistakenly answer the opposite of what you meant.

I am asking if your drive was/is double sided, so a Yes means it was and you didn't have to flip the disk to access side B.

Well, after all I am a teacher, so asking things so it is tricky to get the correct answer despite your knowledge is something I am supposed to do... :evil:

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:14 pm
by ibisum
Cumulus ftw!

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:53 am
by Dbug
I had three microdisc units, one was singled sided (had to swap floppies), the two others (including a Telestrat one) were double sided.

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:59 am
by Symoon
I do have double-sided 3" floppy drives, but if I ever play on my real Oric, I'll probably use 3.5" disks.

I understand the (very interesting) question is about the existing hardware, but the results might have to be re-examined if you want to decide if it's worth doing a specific single-sided/double-sided version - or none ;)

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:15 am
by Dbug
Symoon: What I told Chema is that if he limits his game to 40-something tracks, it would work fine on both 3.5" and 3" floppies.

It's what we did for our old Defence-Force demos.

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 12:48 pm
by Steve M
I think I have double sided 3" but I prefer to use 3.5".

3" disks are hard to find now or are a bit expensive.

If you have single sided drives isn't it possible to put the main program on A and then any further levels etc on side B ?

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:42 pm
by Chema
Hi Steve. My question, as Dbug clarified, is about how many 3" FDDs were double sided. I thought nearly no one, but I was obviously wrong!

So I might release the game in an image with a geometry of 40 tracks, so you can use both kind of disks... And now that I mention it, would that work for 5.25 floppies too?

I cannot split the game as you suggest, because of how the information is stored in the disk. There are no things as levels, but packs with strings, scripts, graphics, etc. which are loaded on demand. It is impossible to divide in two halves and very difficult even replicating things on both sides. And then the save point, which is stored at the end sectors and saved by the game itself when needed.

Re: Question regarding floppies

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 5:59 pm
by Steve M
I've got two 5.25 but hardly ever used them. I can't recall if they are double sided.

I'm not sure if the original Oric Microdisc was single or double sided, but I think later ones were double.