22 Feb
2022
22 Feb
'22
7:59 p.m.
On Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 8:43 PM Jay Jaeger via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org wrote:
I have as well, and things don't work the way you say. The TEAC 55 drives
are able to do this. In college I exchanged data between a data collection
AT and a MicroVAX ii on RX50 media. It was sometimes formatted on my
Rainbow at home and later on the AT since I got tired of being in the loop.
We had none of these problems as long as we avoided HD media.
Warner
> JRJ
On 2/22/2022 6:12 PM, js--- via cctalk wrote:
Not true. Not for RX50 at least. Both the 1.2MB format and the RX50 format
use 80 tracks. There is no double stepping or half width tracks involved.
On 2/22/2022 7:00 PM, Ray Jewhurst wrote:
Writing a 360KB or RX50 diskette with a 1.2MB drive is a path to a lot
of frustration. Not only do you have to double step the drive (software
often takes care of that part), but the tracks written will be narrower
than a real RX50 / 306KB drive, providing a smaller signal/noise ratio. I read that you can indeed use a standard 1.2 Meg
drive and that you
can also use DSHD 5.25 disks in place of RX50s. Is there any truth in
this? If there is it will be much easier and cheaper to make disks for
my Rainbow.
As Chuck noted, I'd think you'd want to use 360K media -- not DSHD
diskettes... and ensure that the 1.2MB drive is slowing down to 300RPM
with a data rate of 250KHZ.
These features will depend on the 1.2MB drive you have, as well as your
FDC and imaging software.
- John Singleton And, if you don't start with completely
magnetically erased media, any
left over junk in any data left over may be picked up by the RX50 head.
Also not true. Writing a full track to format it results in well formed
media. As long as you don't use HD media. DD or QD media works just fine.
Been there, done that.