12 Oct
2008
12 Oct
'08
1:12 p.m.
Seems odd - if other formats commonly used on this
machine use
standard enough encoding, headers and marks for a PC controller
to read, I wonder why they went with a different format for the
8-sector variety. Is the 8-sector type older? (ie: perhaps the
changed to a more standard format somewhere along the way?)
It's been many years since I've used my 3b1's, but I seem to recall
that while some of the distribution disks are indeed formatted (and I
believe that the 3b1 used a 10 sector-per-track format) and can be
mounted as per usual, I think that most of the factory distribution
disks actually contained raw data created by the Unix cpio utility.
These diskettes are essentially a backup set, and cpio treated the
drive as a raw character device. Again it's been years, but I don't
even recall having to format the disks prior to using cpio to back
up data...
Scott