Acorn double density 5 1/4" disk - Revision history

JTN: acknowledge DFS

2026-03-25T01:23:10Z

acknowledge DFS

Dan Tobias: Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=physical |subcat=Floppy disk }} The '''Acorn double density 5 1/4" disk''' was used with Acorn computers, a line of computers from the UK in the 1970s..."

2019-09-04T14:16:32Z

Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=physical |subcat=Floppy disk }} The '''Acorn double density 5 1/4" disk''' was used with Acorn computers, a line of computers from the UK in the 1970s..."

New page

{{FormatInfo
|formattype=physical
|subcat=Floppy disk
}}
The '''Acorn double density 5 1/4" disk''' was used with Acorn computers, a line of computers from the UK in the 1970s through 1990s, which included the popular BBC microcomputer, and eventually led to [[RISC OS]]. It succeeded the [[Acorn single density 5 1/4" disk]], and was succeeded by the [[Acorn double density 3 1/2" disk]] and the [[Acorn high density 3 1/2" disk]].

The disks had single and double sided variants. The single sided ones had variants with 40 and 80 tracks, each with 16 sectors to the track and 256 bytes per sector, for a capacity of 160 and 320 kilobytes respectively. The double sided variant had 80 tracks per side for a total capacity of 640 kilobytes. [[MFM encoding]] was used.

The [[ADFS]] (Advanced Disc Filing System) was used as the file system, and [[BBC BASIC tokenized file]]s were among the file types stored.

[[Category:Acorn computers]]

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 The disks had single and double sided variants. The single sided ones had variants with 40 and 80 tracks, each with 16 sectors to the track and 256 bytes per sector, for a capacity of 160 and 320 kilobytes respectively. The double sided variant had 80 tracks per side for a total capacity of 640 kilobytes. [[MFM encoding]] was used.
-The [[ADFS]] (Advanced Disc Filing System) was used as the file system, and [[BBC BASIC tokenized file]]s were among the file types stored.
+The standard [[DFS]] (Disc Filing System) could be used as the file system for these disks, but didn't make full use of their capacity; some proprietary DFS variants could. Alternatively, [[ADFS]] could be used as a file system, with full double-density support. [[BBC BASIC tokenized file]]s were among the file types stored.
 [[Category:Acorn computers]]