31 Jul
2007
31 Jul
'07
12:44 p.m.
Subject: Re: Reading NorthStar Horizon hard sector disks on PC
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:18:41 -0700
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
On 31 Jul 2007 at 9:53, Dave Dunfield wrote:
Error! Advanatge is the same format as the MDS [Aka Horizon) and does
both SD and DD formats. Least mine does.
I believe there was an aftermarket board that would fit the Advantage
bus (non S100) to provide things like a soft sector FDC. There was
also a hard disk controller.
Allison
Also, the N* disks are hard-sectored. This means
that the controller
needs to see the individual holes to know where each sector data
starts. The PC disk controller has no means to aligning individual
sector data to index holes, even if it could see the sector data.
Not all Northstar diskettes are HS. One of the models (Advantage?)
isn't--and it's that format that the Microsolutions MatchPoint will
read, not the others. It's been too long since I've seen the darned
things...
Cheers,
Chuck
1 Aug
1 Aug
4:17 a.m.
Not all
Northstar diskettes are HS. One of the models (Advantage?)
isn't--and it's that format that the Microsolutions MatchPoint will
read, not the others. It's been too long since I've seen the darned
things...
Error! Advanatge is the same format as the MDS [Aka Horizon) and does
both SD and DD formats. Least mine does. 
8:37 a.m.
On 31 Jul 2007 at 15:44, Allison wrote:
> Error! Advanatge is the same format as the MDS
[Aka Horizon) and
does
both SD and DD formats. Least mine does.
As I said, it's been a very long time. I recall perhaps about 10
years ago, getting some N* diskettes in that I could have sworn the
Matchpoint supported and discovering to my surprise that it didn't.
I rarely get out the PC-XT with that card now, as I've got better
facilities to do the job, but I can double-check my Matchpoint
documentation to see what they said exactly.
The Matchpoint card would be simple to reverse-engineer; not nearly
as involved as the Central Point DOB. I'm not sure if the MP drivers
work on anything much faster than a PC-AT, however. To my knowledge,
most were sold to handle Apple diskettes, rather than N* ones. The
USPS purchased a bunch of them at one time. The card was
discontinued officially sometime around 1989, but you could get one
from MS as late as 1993 if you knew to ask for the
person who was
handling USPS requests.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:32 p.m.
Hi
There is a fellow named Andrew Lynch on the Vintage Computer Forum
that has a setup to read N* hard disk.
Check with him.
Dwight
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