19 Sep
2006
19 Sep
'06
4:03 a.m.
Subject: RE: CompuPro floppy controller differences
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:22:52 -0700
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
On 9/18/2006 at 8:06 AM Allison wrote:
Just goes to prove PCs and what standards. ;)
They were all over the map just like all the other boxen on storage.
Allison
3.5" 720k
There were two "standard" versions of the 720K 3.5 format, differing in the
cluster and FAT size. One was the definition put out by IBM sometime
around MS-DOS 2.1 and the other, by Microsoft in MS-DOS 4.00 (which was an
abomination).
So, you haven't used 3.5" 1.3MB DOS diskettes? (2x8x1024)? Many USB
floppies and Superdrives support the DOS-V format under Windows 2K and XP;
though FORMAT doesn't appear to understand how to initializae blanks.
...and let's not forget the short-lived "special" distribution formats from
IBM and Microsoft that got around 1.8MB per 3.5" floppy by using more
sectors per track+interleave+skew(MS DMF) or differing sector sizes (IBM
XDF). I suppose you could call those "standard", since they were
officially-endorsed formats.