Writing 8" floppies with SuperCard Pro

[Josh Dersch]

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 5:42 PM
To: General at classiccmp.org; Discussion@
Subject: Re: Writing 8" floppies with SuperCard Pro

> On 08/11/2015 05:27 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:

>> The issue is that upon reading back a disk that has been written via 
>> the SuperCard, data is fine up until about cylinder 60, at which point 
>> bad sectors start appearing more and more frequently (though most of 
>> the data is still OK).  I tried disabling TG43 just to see if it made 
>> a difference, and it does - with TG43 disabled sectors written past 
>> cylinder 43 read back as garbage.
>>
>> I'm running short of ideas.  Anyone else have any experience with this 
>> combo?  Any suggestions on troubleshooting tips?

> So what does the software do to compensate for bit crowding/shifting 
> when writing to the inner cylinders?    That is, what sort of write 
> precompensation does it perform?

Absolutely no idea -- the  manual isn't particularly technical and the SDK mentions nothing.  I'll see if there's anything to be dug up in this regard.  (Thanks also to Eric for suggesting this problem...)

- Josh

> --Chuck