[anonymousiam]

I had four 8" drives. Two (DSDD) were connected to my IMSAI (modified with CompuPro S-100 boards). The other two (SSDD) were connected to my Ferguson Big Board. I never tried using the 8" drives on systems that would normally interface to 5-1/4" drives, but I always assumed it would be a simple matter of adapting the 50-pin edge connector used for the 8" drives to the 34-pin edge connecter used for the 5-1/4" drives.

At one time I had a calibration disk and an "exerciser board" for 8" drives that could be used (along with an oscilloscope) to adjust the track positions and gain settings on the drive.

I gave away all of those old goodies after I purchased at 25MHz 386 PC clone that could emulate CP/M faster than the native Z-80 hardware.

It was fun tinkering with computer hardware in that era, but it was also frustrating because of the limitations of the technology. It's hard to believe that processors of today run three orders of magnitude faster, and have six+ orders of magnitude more RAM, with six orders of magnitude more disk storage with about five orders of magnitude faster disk I/O.

I don't miss the old days so much.