MS-DOS FAT file system ripped off? (from WHOM?)

From: Jim Strickland <jim_at_calico.litterbox.com>
Date: Wed Jan 13 19:19:00 1999

> In the Commodore 1541 floppy drive controller, there's a job code for BUMP
> which sends the drive out to never-never land, stopped only by the track 1
> stop, an analogous situation. Loud!
>
> When a drive seek fails, the drive first tries to read the halftrack (recall
> that Commodore disks are 48 tpi, not 96), then BUMPs out and back, tries to
> read the sector, tries to read the half-track again, BUMPs out and back, and
> so on, until it reaches a flag value stored in drive RAM, at which point it
> declares the error. Very noisy, and the drive light flashes randomly during
> this process.
>
> A program called Drive Music (and I have a program called Drive Composer
> which worked on a similar principle) used the "head-banging" to play music, by
> vibrating the head against the track 1 stop at varying frequencies. Very
> ingenious. :-)

I seem to recall an ad in the likes of Compute magazine for a drive stop
replacement with a *spring* that made the BUMP silent. The nasty noise the
drive made during BUMPS was refered to as Mack-ing. After Mack Trucks.

Jim Strickland
jim_at_DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vote Meadocrat! Bill and Opus in 2000 - Who ELSE is there?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Wed Jan 13 1999 - 19:19:00 GMT