Kaypro II format oddities

The original question was whether it is possible to write Kaypro diskettes in a PC. If you have the opportunity to also do the formatting in the PC, then it is pretty easy with appropriate software. Single sided Kaypro diskettes are usually not a problem. But, if you need to work with double sided diskettes that were formatted by the Kaypro, for either reading OR writing, then there are some minor complications. The Kaypro uses a Western Digital type of FDC chip, the PC uses an NEC 765 type. The WD chip can ignore certain fields in the sector headers, specifically including the "Side number" field. When the Kaypro formats a DS diskette, it puts an INCORRECT value in the side number field of the sectors on the second side. That doesn't pose a problem for the Kaypro, since it can just ignore that field when reading or writing its own diskettes. But the NEC 765 (in a PC) can not ignore that field. It is possible with most PC disk controllers to control the FDC directly and have it look for that wrong value. But only if communicating directly with the chip, NOT when doing disk I/O through the BIOS. There was a period of time when a number of machines came out that did not respond appropriately to attempts to work directly with the FDC, but could still do fairly versatile disk I/O through the BIOS. To avoid a disastrous level of needed tech support, XenoCopy operates at a BIOS level, and even Uniform (from Micro Solutions) DISCONTINUED support of Kaypro double sided formats. -- Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Feldman, Robert wrote: