8" hard sectored floppies

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Jun 3 18:21:09 2004

>From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
>
>> >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.
>
>On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>> 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
>
>If you just use that for FORMATing, you could then disable the index for
>all subsequent access, either by putting opaque tape over the hole in the
>diskette jacket (won't work with some TEAC drives), or interrupting that
>wire in the cable.

Hi Fred
 I don't recall what drive it had but I just left the hole completely
open after formatting and it worked fine for read/write. I
don't believe anything cared how often there were holes, after
formatting. As I recall, reading disk controller specs, there
was an error that could happen if a sector wasn't found within
so many revolutions. I don't think my machine used this feature.
Dwight
Received on Thu Jun 03 2004 - 18:21:09 BST