On Oct 4, 16:30, allisonp_at_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
Received on Mon Oct 04 1999 - 22:26:35 BST