17 Jun
1998
17 Jun
'98
2:30 p.m.
C'mon. Even I basically know this one. A hard
sectored diskette has tiny
little holes (IIRC, near the inside), so that the computer would move from
one to the next in a mechanical manner (hardware), while MOST soft sectored
diskettes had a single hole used for refference. From there, it would just
spin around, and control the rest by software. The Apple II, however,
COMPLETELY ignored this. It could use hard sectored or soft sectored
diskettes, or even diskettes with no little hole at all. It was completely
software driven.
Likewise the Commodore 8-bitters. In the early 1980s, I was one of the
first in my school (I was 14 or so at the time) to own a floppy disk
(yes, a disk, not a drive). I had heard of "flippy disks" with two
index holes, which you could turn over, thus using both surfaces in a
single sided drive. But I didn't realise you needed to give it a second
index hole.
So I just cut a second write-permit notch and turned it over. It
worked! Commodore 4040 didn't use the index hole!
Philip.