"3mode" Floppy Drive
Primarily in Japan there are 3,5" high-density floppy drives that support three modes of disk formats instead of the normal two - 1.44 MB (2 MB unformatted), 1.2 MB (1.6 MB unformatted) and 720 KB (1 MB unformatted). Originally, the high-density mode for 3,5" floppy drives in Japan only supported a capacity of 1.2 MB instead of the 1.44 MB capacity that was used elsewhere. While the more common 1.44 MB format worked at 300 rpms, the 1.2 MB format used 360 rpms instead, thereby closely resembling the 1.2 MB format with 15 sectors / track previously found on 5.25" high-density floppy drives. Later Japanese floppy drives incorporated support for both high-density formats (as well as the single-density format), hence the name 3mode. Some BIOSes have a configuration setting to enable this mode for floppy drives supporting it.
Read more about this topic: Floppy Disk Controller
Famous quotes containing the word drive:
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)