hard-sector 5 1/4 disk

you said " ... ..." I have to disagree, actually, because the Apple diskettes all seem to have the holes, not that it matters. While the drive may not have the means to "see" them, since it's about ignoring them, the inability to see them makes them easier to ignore, which, in turn, explains why someone might happily use hard sectored diskettes in an Apple][. That was the point about which there seems to have been some confusion. and " ... Except that they did too much in firmware, . . . ..." Which, admittedly, I don't understand, since the PROM they used was rather small. (...that's where the firmware lives, doncha know...) Most of the work was in the software, actually, since it had to do what the disk format required, and figure out along the way which one it was. I've never liked Apple-disk-related problems, since the Apple system was incredibly fragile and highly unreliable. The first Apple client I had who had been using an Apple][+ in his business summarily took his ][+, drives, and monitor, the whole shebang, out to his dumpster the day I moved his database to a CP/M system with a conventional FDC and a conventional pair of 8" DSDD drives. I'd say he was in hog heaven. His business picked up (though I don't know that the switch had anything to do with that) and his monthly expenditure for MAALOX, Whiskey, and prune juice was substantially reduced. Moreover, he got to see a lot more of his wife and kids. Until a few weeks back when I got into retrieving old 6502 source files, I had forgotten what a piece of crap that disk subsystem was. No wondern so many folks switched to 8" drives. I surely wish I could find an old SVA controller ... <sigh> It's a real wonder microcomputers caught on as well as they did, given the standard set by the Apple ][. The work WOZ did to create the disk subsystem was really ingenious, but still orders of magnitude less reliable than what was offered on more conventional systems. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" &lt;cisin(a)xenosoft.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 7:16 PM Subject: Re: hard-sector 5 1/4 disk it, magnetic > > track) would have no impact. > > The format was, nevertheless, soft-sectored, thereby allowing a smooth > > transition from 13 sectors to 16 sectors, without a major redesign. > > Except that they did too much in firmware, . . . > >