Choosing Diskettes for the Equity II

When you buy diskettes, be sure to choose high-quality diskettes with reinforced hub rings-the added reliability is well worth the extra cost. You also need to make sure you buy the correct format type for the drive(s) in your Equity II.

The top floppy disk drive on the Equity II has a storage capacity of 360KB (kilobytes) and uses 5 %-inch, double-sided, double-density, soft- sectored, 48 TPI (tracks per inch) diskettes. Each double-density disk can hold up to 360KB of data, or about 150 pages of text. (One kilobyte equals 1024 bytes.) These diskettes are compatible with those the IBM PC uses, so you can use diskettes prepared by one computer on the other. On the Equity II, a 360KB floppy disk drive has a PUSH button which you press to hold a diskette in place.

If you have a second 360KB floppy disk drive, your bottom drive uses the same double-density diskettes described above.

If your Equity II has a 1.2MB (megabyte) floppy disk drive, choose 5 %-inch, double-sided, highdensity, soft-sectored, 96 TPI diskettes for this drive. Each highdensity diskette can hold 1.2MB of data, or about 450 pages of text. (One megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes.) These diskettes are compatible with those the IBM PC AT™ uses, so you can use diskettes prepared by one computer on the other. On the Equity II, a 1.2MB floppy disk drive has a latch which you turn to hold a diskette in place.

Before you can use new diskettes, you need to format them. Formatting erases any data stored on a diskette and prepares it to receive new data, so be sure to format only new blank diskettes or diskettes that contain data you want to erase. See your MS-DOS (or other operating system) manual for instructions on how to format diskettes.

Drive and diskette incompatibilities

You need to be aware of some incompatibilities between 360KB and 1.2MB floppy disk drives and the diskettes they use. These incompatibilities apply to diskettes from other compatible computers as well.

Although you cannot use high-density diskettes in a 360KB drive, you can use double-density diskettes in a 1.2MB drive under the circumstances described below.

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