Hi,
I have a Transam Tuscan system and recently received a set of boot disks for
it. I am trying to back these up to a PC, but when reading the disks with
Anadisk or Imagedisk I get 'no data' errors on tracks 3 and higher. The
errors get worse from tracks 3 to 15 then nothing can be read. I have taken
the 5.25" drive out of the Tuscan and put it in the PC, and the contoller
passes the TESTFDC tests for single density and double density.
The odd thing about these floppies is that Anadisk reports them as 512 byte
/ sector and 10 sectors per track. The norm for '360K' floppies is 9 sectors
/ track. The outer sector (track 0) can be read fine with Anadisk, and I can
read the CP/M welcome message.
I was hoping someone could advise on what tricks or techniques I could use?
Would it help for example to slow the drive down below 300rpm?
I assume that with 9 sectors / track there is more time for the FDC to
recgnise the start of each track. I think the Tuscan FDC uses a WD1771
controller, is that better than the NEC765 type-controller and able to pack
more data in? I read on
http://www.s100-manuals.com/Disk-drives.htm that
Kaypro also uses 10 sectors of 512 bytes.
Another thought is to try different PCs, perhaps formating, writing and
reading 10 x 512 byte sectors is another test that could be added to Dave's
TESTFDC program to help find a suitable machine :-)
Lastly (before anyone asks) yes the floppies are soft sectored.
Regards,
John
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