8" hard sectored floppies

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Jun 3 18:00:34 2004

>From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
>
>> > >Hard and Soft sectored disks are never compatible.
>On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
>> > Ah, never say never, my friend! ;-)
>> I believe the ubiquituous NEC 765 (et al) does its "index" on read by
>> scanning for the 0th sector ID (which is 1 :-) The index hole is only
>> needed for formatting, and that only for compatiblity.
>
>Unfortunately, the 765 does a "reset" of the chip whenever it sees the
>index. It can handle NOT having an index hole (AFTER formatting),
>but excess holes will keep it from working.
---snip---

Hi Fred
 When I first got my first PC, I didn't have anything
but hard sectored disk that I'd used on my H89. I made
a foil disk that I put in with the disk to get around this
problem for formatting. It had a large hole that most
of the time only exposed one index hole. Placing it
in the drive was tricky but with access to the top of the
drive I made it work.
 Of course, I later bought a box of 360K disk but this
trick did get me started.
Dwight
Received on Thu Jun 03 2004 - 18:00:34 BST