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/* The 3" floppy disk drives */
Disks were shipped in a paper sleeve or a hard plastic case resembling a compact disc "jewel" case. The casing is thicker and more rigid than that of 3.5" diskettes and sliding metal cover to protect the media surface is internal to the casing and latched, unlike the simple external sliding cover of Sony's version (some reviews at the time reported driving over them with no problems). Because of this they were significantly more expensive than both 5.25" and 3.5" alternatives. This, combined with their low nominal capacities and their essentially proprietary nature, lead to the format being discontinued when the CPC itself was discontinued.
Apart from Amstrad's other 3" machines (machine the PCW and the ZX Spectrum +3(produced by Sinclair), the only other computer systems to use them were the Sega SF-7000 and mostly obscure and exotic CP/M systems such as the Tatung Einstein and Osborne machines, it should be noted that some of these machines used drives with different pinouts and care should be taken when replacing drives.
The data formatting of 3" disks was very similar to that of 5¼" disks, and the Amstrad CPC machines were able to use 5¼" drives through their "external drive" port - either one specially designed for use by the CPC or an adapted IBM-PC drive.
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