14 Feb
1998
14 Feb
'98
1:50 p.m.
If I remember correctly, The 1.2M drive uses a track 1/2 the width of the 360K drive. If
you format a disk and write data with the same drive, there is no problem. The 1.2 drive
can read down the middle of a 360K fat track and all is OK. The 360K drive can read the
1.2M skinny track and all is probably OK. The problem comes in when you use a 1.2M drive
to write on a diskette that was previously written by a 360K drive. The skinny track is
now on top of the fat track. The 360K drive will certainly have problems. It will read the
new data in addition to 1/2 of the old data.
Regards,
Tom Sanderson
wts(a)exo.com
http://exo.com/~wts/wts10005.HTM Virtual Altair Museum
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Allison [SMTP:mallison@konnections.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 1998 9:53 PM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: Disk problems/questions.
I had an IBM 360k that I was using, no compliants. I started having
data problems moving stuff from a true 1.2M to the 360. Later, I put a
360 in the other computer and I still had problems. Finally, I figured
it out, the IBM was either out of alignment, or shot...
Could it just simply be the 360k drive?
-Mike
Barry Peterson wrote:
On Wed, 11 Feb 1998 07:27:01 -0500, you said:
Scandisk works excellent for me here even on my
Leading Edge XT. It's
something your doing not scandisk.
Maybe it's a difference between the XT and AT BIOS or how the format
command is executed, I wasn't "doing" anything but:
1) format b:
(Responding to prompts as appropriate)
2)scandisk b:
(Error message reported by said scandisk program)
No parameters, no modifiers, nothing more than the above two commands
_______________
Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan. 
14 Feb
14 Feb
7:45 p.m.
On Sat, 14 Feb 1998 11:50:30 -0800, you said:
If I remember correctly, The 1.2M drive uses a track
1/2 the width of the 360K drive.
One more time: My problem/question has nothing to do with a 1.2MB
drive.
With a 386 computer configured for B: = 360KB, a disk formatted in B:
seems fine with no error messages. BUT: running SCANDISK on said
newly-formatted 360KB diskette results in an error message: "Media
descriptor byte incorrect", and prompts for repair. The byte, before
and after repair, is hex FD. Has anyone else experienced this problem?
I have tried many disks in many drives with the exact same results.
_______________
Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.
15 Feb
15 Feb
1 p.m.
On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Barry Peterson wrote:
With a 386 computer configured for B: = 360KB, a disk
formatted in B:
seems fine with no error messages. BUT: running SCANDISK on said
newly-formatted 360KB diskette results in an error message: "Media
descriptor byte incorrect", and prompts for repair. The byte, before
and after repair, is hex FD. Has anyone else experienced this problem?
Barry, perhaps there is a problem with ScanDisk on 360K disks?
If there is a problem, you would probably be able to find some information
about it in Microsoft's knowledge base. Go to their FTP site
(ftp.microsoft.com) and navigate from there. I'm sure Kai can supply a
specific path.
Anyway, once you get to it, there is an index file which has a summary for
each knowledge base article. The summary in your case would be something
like "Scandisk reports Media Descriptor Byte Incorrect". There would be
an index key before it. This is what you would use to find the actual
article. You would navigate a directory tree until you got to the
directory where the file with the above information would be located.
Good luck.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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