5.25-Inch Floppy Disk
Floppy disks with a rectangular size of 5.25 inches contain a circular magnetically coated disk medium
protected by a flexible outer plastic sleeve or "jacket". These smaller 5.25" disks were the second generation
of disks, following the IBM introduced 8-inch disks. As these 5 and a quarter inch disks were the "smaller"
disks, they were sometimes called "Mini diskettes", "Mini disk", or "Minifloppy").
Earlier floppy disk drives usually wrote 40 tracks on lower density iron oxide magnetic coating, resulting in 48 tracks per inch (48 TPI) on Single or Double Density disks. This format was introduced by Shugart Associates and became a standard. Later generations of drive mechanics which were able to provide higher accuracy and "double stepping" were able to double that and write 96 tracks per inch, 80 tracks, on recording media which was in turn equally of higher quality, higher magnetic resolution (High Density).
Earlier Micropolis floppy disk drives ("MegaFloppy") extended Shugart's standard of 48 tpi (tracks per inch) and increased track count to 77 tracks on a disk, and with 100 TPI track density doubled the available storage on a disk.
A next step was to also raise recording density in the "MetaFloppy" series of drives. While the industry's step from single to double densitity didn't change track width, but doubled capacity by replacing FM data encoding with MFM, the Micropolis "quad density" drive technology combined a doubled track count and replaced MFM data encoding with GCR to make four times as much total storage available on a single 5.25-inch floppy disk. Despite a number of manufacturers (Tandon , Commodore, both in earlier systems) adopting the 100TPI standard, Micropolis later switched to 96TPI when "double stepping" drives based on a doubling of Shugart's 48TPI won out. (It's intersting to note that the higher track density was written on Double Density recording media. Write heads used lower 300-oersted magnetic coercivity instead of 600-oersted needed to write to high-density magnetic surfaces.)
5.25-inch media was available as "single density" SD (1D) and the more common "double density" DD (2D). Both of these designations were generally identical to those of 8-inch disks.
Quad density (QD or 4D) doubles capacity over DD by narrowing the width of tracks to 0.160 mm (0.0063 in) for a density of 96 tpi. As explained here, Micropolis (and some other manufacturers, Tandon, Micro Peripherals (MPI), Teac) used a track density of 100 tpi to reach "Quad Density" in their drives.
High density (HD) on the other hand, improves capacity by utilizing a 96 tpi track density in conjunction with improved cobalt disk coating and stronger 600-oersted write heads, allowing 9646 bpi to be written. This slightly wider track width was incompatible with Micropolis' inital Quad Density track stepping, but when the 96 tpi standard won out in customer adoption, Micropolis started offering 96 tpi drive versions in 1980 (Micropolis 1015-V and 1015-VI, Micropolis 1016-V 1016-VI). Compare 1015/1016-family notes.
Earlier floppy disk drives usually wrote 40 tracks on lower density iron oxide magnetic coating, resulting in 48 tracks per inch (48 TPI) on Single or Double Density disks. This format was introduced by Shugart Associates and became a standard. Later generations of drive mechanics which were able to provide higher accuracy and "double stepping" were able to double that and write 96 tracks per inch, 80 tracks, on recording media which was in turn equally of higher quality, higher magnetic resolution (High Density).
Earlier Micropolis floppy disk drives ("MegaFloppy") extended Shugart's standard of 48 tpi (tracks per inch) and increased track count to 77 tracks on a disk, and with 100 TPI track density doubled the available storage on a disk.
A next step was to also raise recording density in the "MetaFloppy" series of drives. While the industry's step from single to double densitity didn't change track width, but doubled capacity by replacing FM data encoding with MFM, the Micropolis "quad density" drive technology combined a doubled track count and replaced MFM data encoding with GCR to make four times as much total storage available on a single 5.25-inch floppy disk. Despite a number of manufacturers (Tandon , Commodore, both in earlier systems) adopting the 100TPI standard, Micropolis later switched to 96TPI when "double stepping" drives based on a doubling of Shugart's 48TPI won out. (It's intersting to note that the higher track density was written on Double Density recording media. Write heads used lower 300-oersted magnetic coercivity instead of 600-oersted needed to write to high-density magnetic surfaces.)
5.25-inch media was available as "single density" SD (1D) and the more common "double density" DD (2D). Both of these designations were generally identical to those of 8-inch disks.
Quad density (QD or 4D) doubles capacity over DD by narrowing the width of tracks to 0.160 mm (0.0063 in) for a density of 96 tpi. As explained here, Micropolis (and some other manufacturers, Tandon, Micro Peripherals (MPI), Teac) used a track density of 100 tpi to reach "Quad Density" in their drives.
High density (HD) on the other hand, improves capacity by utilizing a 96 tpi track density in conjunction with improved cobalt disk coating and stronger 600-oersted write heads, allowing 9646 bpi to be written. This slightly wider track width was incompatible with Micropolis' inital Quad Density track stepping, but when the 96 tpi standard won out in customer adoption, Micropolis started offering 96 tpi drive versions in 1980 (Micropolis 1015-V and 1015-VI, Micropolis 1016-V 1016-VI). Compare 1015/1016-family notes.