23 Jun
2000
23 Jun
'00
12:37 p.m.
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Ernest wrote:
I've started to make copies of these HP150 disks,
and since I have a minute,
I was wondering why my WinPC won't recognize these disks.
Because that is NOT one of the "official" MS-DOS disk formats that
MICROS~1 supports.
MICROS~1 had provision for OEMs to be able to modify certain pieces
(IO.SYS) of MS-DOS, particularly in version 2.11, to be able to add their
own unique formats.
Starting in version 3.20, all variants of MS-DOS support a 720K format,
although that is NOT always the same as the 720K format that some
OEMs had been using prior to that.
What I've been
doing to get around this problem is to copy each disk to the HD on my 150,
and then copy the new files from the 150 to a blank 720k disk, which my
Pentium system can see but this is really tedious.
What's happening is that my Pentium system doesn't recognize the format of
these old SS 3.5 disks, even though they are formatted with MSDOS (FAT 12 I
think.) My Pentium will see the 720k disks that I format on the HP but not
the old SS disks. Does anyone know why?
Yes.
There are literally hundreds of mutually incompatible MS-DOS disk formats
(as well as thousands of CP/M ones)
Are the old disks copy protected?
No.
Or is because they're single sided? I'm
curious because I would like to find a better way to copy these disks.
There are several programs available for transferring files between
different disk formats. http://www.xenosoft.com/xcflyer.html
But what you are currently doing seems to be working reasonably well.
Does your HP support the "phantom B: drive"? Quick experiment: Even with
only one physical floppy, ask for a DIR B: Most MS-DOS systems will NOT
say "Invalid Drive Specification" to that! Instead, they will prompt you
to put the drive B: disk into the drive! The system uses the one physical
drive for both A: and B: ! You could simply type COPY A:*.* B: and it
will prompt you for disk swaps. WRITE-PROTECT ALL OF YOUR SOURCE DISKS
BEFORE YOU START, since sometime you will put the wrong disk into the
drive.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219