16 Jan
2005
16 Jan
'05
10:45 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 01:00 +0000, Tony Duell wrote:
It'd be nice if there was a FAQ about floppy formats in general TBH.
Covering some of the different geomery and encoding schemes out there
etc. (not necessarily mentioning any machines by name).
Hmm, I don't really know how it could be structured, but the same floppy
questions seem to crop up time and time again.
It'd also be a good place to mention some of the different controlling
hardware out there (catweasel, SCSI floppy controllers etc.)
Or go nuts and turn it into a small ftp site with a FAQ *and* docs /
specs for different formats, hardware etc.
cheers
Jules
The whole
impetus behind this was that I was trying to read an old 360K
(might even be 320K or even 180K, I'm not sure) disk and while I could
read the directory, none of the files larger than say a cluster could be
read. I attributed this to the drive not being a "true" 360K drive.
There is no problem reading a true 40-cylinder disk on an 80 cylinder
drive (provided the software knows to double-step it). The problem comes
if you write to a 40 cylinder disk on an 80 cylinder drive and then try
to read it on a true 40 cylinder drive.
I remember writing a FAQ about this a couple of years back....
-tony