18 Mar
2011
18 Mar
'11
1:13 p.m.
Every blank that I place in the Canon AS-100 reports an error.
All of these disks are new-old-stock. I know they work in other units
(Commodore 128 for instance).
Even the Tandy 2000 can format a standard 360/400k disk to 720k. I've
tried those and high density floppies w/no success. What haven't I done?
Although I don;t know the machine in qusiton, this sounds like an 80
cylinder double-sided format using the normal double-desnity date rate
[Remember that the original IBM PC-DOS double-sided format was 320K. 40
cylinders, 2 hears, 8 sectors/track, 512 bytes/sector. Your disks could
be much the same but with 80 cylinders]
If so, you certainly don;t want to be using the high density disks. Their
coercivity is too high.
I have had problems using PC '360K' disks in 80 cylinder drives. I am not
sure why, but some do not format reliably. It may be something like a
higher noise level on disks not required to handle 80 cylinders.
I was given a large bag of bluk-erased DEC RX50 disks (which were
origianlly 80 cylinder signle-sided), and have never had any problems with
those, not even using both sides.
Of coruse, there may be a problem with your disk controller or drive.
-tony