17 Dec
2001
17 Dec
'01
8:21 p.m.
Yes, you can. Correction. I, and others, can. I shouldn't claim that
you can.
But Int13 won't. That is NOT the same as the chip not being able.
You need to assemble an array of the sector headers that you want.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
There's one advantage that you can exploit with
the WD parts that the NEC parts
won't support, and that's formatting with interleaving. The NEC parts seem to
be unable to format a diskette with other than strict ordinal sector numbering,
while the WD allows you to number them with any offset you like. The result is
that an interleaved format optimized for one set of system parameters can still
be read by another system without the other system having to be adjusted in any
way. Of course it won't be able to read an entire track in one revolution, but
it will have the ability to read the diskette without introducing a modified
lookup table for sector numbers. I know that doesn't make much difference
nowadays, but back when folks used floppies as their main/only storage medium,
it impacted performance.
Dick