HardCard driver disks

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Thu Nov 22 14:39:34 2001

> Nope. the compatability is not symetric. You can read with 80track(1.2m)
> drives as the head width is narrower than the track for the 40 track(360k).
> You cannot relaibly write as the narrow 80tr head cannot fully erase a 40tr
> data track. You can fake it if you completely erase the media and use
> a 80tr drive to write but reading that reliably is poor. If you then write
to
> that with a 40tr drive once again it will write the wider track.
>
> For that reason reading/writing across the 40/80 track drive sizes should
> be limited to read only save for special cases (emergency). My experience
> is that (read only) is adaquate. If you have cross compatability on read
> try erasing the disk completely first.

Someone used to market a utility in one of those microscopic ads in
the back of Byte magazine that did double-track writes on the 80tr
drives to yield diskettes that would read more reliably.

Anyone have expericen with that?

-dq
Received on Thu Nov 22 2001 - 14:39:34 GMT