4 Apr
2012
4 Apr
'12
7:09 a.m.
On Apr 4, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541 disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
Well, the *drive* will, because it just sends the raw signals out
its connector. A PC floppy *controller* will not handle the data
encoding, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the drive itself.
You can read GCR-encoded Mac 400/800k disks with a PC floppy drive
and an appropriate controller, too. Products like KryoFlux,
DiskFerret and the like are designed to do just that and more.
Writing is a different matter, because the narrower gap on an HD
head won't necessarily make a big enough flux transition for the
lower-density heads to pick up reliably. The data format isn't
the problem there, it's signal levels and magnetic domain sizes.
- Dave