Different diskette formats (was: Wanted: MicroBee computer - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

4 Oct 1999

On Oct 4, 16:30, allisonp(a)world.std.com wrote:
...
  Subject: Re: Different diskette formats (was: Wanted:
MicroBee computer
  BTW, Allison recently referred to
"hundreds" of different formats.  Our
 estimate is abour 2500!  XenoCopy-PC currently supports 400. 
 No arguement here.  I was talking media, drive and physical format.  Add
 OS and things like sectornumbering and skewing... gee, only 2500? ;)

 As a direct result of that there are very few 5.25 formats implmented in
 my room and I try to keep it to the bare minimum.  I've gone as far as to
 modify systems for 3.5" drives and lock in on the more limited numbers of
 formats used there.  The 5.25" market was both standard and nonportable
 at the same time and was a constant source of annoyance.

 Now if it's 5.25 it will be VT180, Visual1050, Kaypro 1/II, RX50, RX33 or
 I use only of many tools to copy down to native for that machine. Or at
 least the common ones in that pack. 
I have the same sort of problem.  Even when considering just one
manufacturer, there can be a fair range of formats.  Commodore formats come
to mind, but in my case I have a lot of Acorn equipment, and I have 5.25"
disks that are 100K (SSSD 40 track 10 sectors/track 256 bytes/sector), 160K
(SSDD 40 track 16 sectors/track 256 bytes/sector), 200K (DSSD 40 track 10
sectors/track 256 bytes/sector), 320K (both DSDD 40 track, and SSDD 80
track), 640K (DSDD 80 track).  Then there are 3.5" disks 640K (same format
as the 5.25"), 800K (DSDD 80 track 5 sectors/track 1024 bytes/sector), and
1.6M (DSHD 80 track 5 sectors/track 1024 bytes/sector).  Several of these
have different possible directory structures, too.  The later machines can
also read/write most of the "standard" MS-DOS formats.  To keep it halfway
manageable, I tend to copy anything Acorn I get to one of the two most
common formats.

-- 

Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York