Stan writes:

> As it turns out, he very well may have a non-standard floppy.  A number of
>  companies tried to establish a bigger-than-1.44MB standard "floppy".
>
>  If he really has such a non-standard floppy, chide him for ever taking it
>  away from the computer it was made on, and then look into alternative
>  methods of getting the data:  (1) make a new 1.44 MB floppy (generally
>  possibly on those non-standard drive, if you work hard enough); (2) put
>  the data on the net somewhere, and grab it that way.
>
>  On the off chance you ever encounter a floppy like that and have *no*
>  way of getting the data, and you *really* need the data, there are some
>  companies around that specialize in moving data from one media to another,
>  and can handle a surprising number of formats.

That's true, but I know of no one who increased the size of 1.44MB floppy to a
mere 2MB (not counting Denys' recounting of a Sony 2.88MB floppy, which I must
admit that I've never heard of before). All of the increases in floppy
densities that I'm aware of were significant increases and generally used some
sort of "floptical" technology to increase the 1.44MB's physical format to
either 21MB or 120MB (and which, as Denys said, can read the standard 1.44MB
format as well).

We bought into the 21MB floptical format about eight years ago to back up our
Macs. Discs for the "wave of the future" aren't even manufactured any more,
although once they were made and commonly advertised by Sony, 3M, and others.
We still use the flopticals, but very carefully nowadays.

Wirt Atmar