floppy low level format question

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri Jun 11 09:44:47 2004

Hmm, my pondering about reading raw data from floppies got me thinking.
I have some data on low level floppy format, which gives the following
information:

Each track has an index gap, followed by a gap 1, followed by a number
of sectors, followed by a termination gap.

Each sector is made up of an ID field, seperator gap, data field, and
then a trailing gap on all except the last sector on a track.

This is given as the same for both MFM and FM recording.

The information I have gives the makeup of each of the gap types in
terms of bit patterns, counts, what clock transitions are missing for
MFM formats etc.

Question is, is this a standard? I mean, for any disk using MFM or FM
recording are these bit patterns going to be the same? Or is it
dependant on the controller chip being used?

cheers

Jules
Received on Fri Jun 11 2004 - 09:44:47 BST