Changes

Those Disk 3½" & 5¼" Floppy Disc Drives are not the original Amstrad standardyet the media and drives were far cheaper so they were common especially when used as a 2nd drive.

Yet they During the lifetime of the CPC both drives were far advertised in UK magazines with the 3½" becoming much more cheap common in it's later years due to it's use in the PC. In Germany 5¼" were advertised and are nowadays easier well supported by Vortex for much longer. Magazines also promoted the use of these drives especially with the use of another DOS or C/PM to be able to usetheir full capacity.

Especially the Both 3½" (3& 5¼"1/2 ?) as those disk are still availlable in some retailers. You can also easily find such drives in any garbage if you properly scavenge old rusty computerswere often double sided and supported double density and high density although the Amstrad could only support Double Density.

Those Disk size couldn't be side switched manuallyNowadays the 5¼" drives are hard to find and are expensive, media is not made anymore and new-old-stock media is also hard to find.The older models where using only one side (360 Ko ?)By double side (DD) or even High Density where available3½" drives can be found from old PC computers and there is still a read supply of new-old-stock media.

*er...I don't remember (editors please ?)*1,2 Mo was To make full use of the maximum...capacity of the media you need to use another DOS or C/PM on my old PC.your CPC which can support more tracks and two sides.Then you can use around 720KB per disc.

Nowaday, only HD 3the most common 3½"1/2 disk is HD. These can be found at good as used or new old retailer'sstock on auction sites.

But or our beloved CPC can't understand easily the concept of High Density Disk with 1,44Mo avalaible44MB available... so you have to cheat to use the media: just put some opaque duct-tape (scotch-tape, whatever...) on the HD Hole.

So you have to cheat : just put some duct-tape (scotch-tape, whatever...) on the HD Hole.Tada, a proper the drive will think DD disk with 720 Ko if your OS allows media is used and now it.Or a common 2x180Ko (2x 178Ko ?) with firmware Loco Basic, if you have a manual side switcher button too of course)'s usable.

PC users used You can also modify your HD drive to do the opposite : file behave as a HD hole on DD diskone (but this would be permanent of course)...this worked well sometimes.Check for appropriate jumpers on your drive!

A great advantage at the time (in the 80's) was to get access to CP/M sofware library, as most of those were on such DiskFloppy Disks.

Also, the Disk those Floppy Disks were far cheaper than the exotic 3", but...few CPC users actually got own such drives.

Mostly professionnal users...The common snotling Gamer couldn't even dream of this(nor even knew it possible)...until nowadays.

It is common to get 720Ko 720KB disk (using the 2 sides, so 80 tracks)

Many Modern CPC users replace their old 3" by an external 3"1/2, adding a Disk drive A-B / B-A switcher (allowing to use the external disk Drive as if it were the internal one = Drive A).= Software's issues ==

== Softwares released on Many Modern CPC users replace their old 3" with an external 3"1/2 , often adding a Disk drive A-B / B-A switcher (allowing the use of an external diskDrive as if it were the internal one ==Drive A) and/or a side switcher to allow the use of a 3"1/2 disk like a 3" disk... switching manually the sides as needed by good old 3" disk drives (yet a decent software can do it).

*The side switcher and A-B drive's switchers are needed only if you use old software (using [[Orion PrimeAMSDOS|AMSDOS]]This pure awsomness even use a full DD disk's 80 tracks with more than 700Ko of Data, yet you have to get a proper DD disk Drive), as some older models may lack this most of them couldn't really figure they were loaded from B drives, or had no such feature..as double sided drives.

==GuideConnections and Wiring == [[DIY:Floppy_Drives]] == Guides ==