4 floppy disk drives on a PC?

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon Jan 17 06:45:48 2005

On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 01:00 +0000, Tony Duell wrote:
> > The whole impetus behind this was that I was trying to read an old 360K
> > (might even be 320K or even 180K, I'm not sure) disk and while I could
> > read the directory, none of the files larger than say a cluster could be
> > read. I attributed this to the drive not being a "true" 360K drive.
>
> There is no problem reading a true 40-cylinder disk on an 80 cylinder
> drive (provided the software knows to double-step it). The problem comes
> if you write to a 40 cylinder disk on an 80 cylinder drive and then try
> to read it on a true 40 cylinder drive.
>
> I remember writing a FAQ about this a couple of years back....
>
> -tony

It'd be nice if there was a FAQ about floppy formats in general TBH.
Covering some of the different geomery and encoding schemes out there
etc. (not necessarily mentioning any machines by name).

Hmm, I don't really know how it could be structured, but the same floppy
questions seem to crop up time and time again.

It'd also be a good place to mention some of the different controlling
hardware out there (catweasel, SCSI floppy controllers etc.)

Or go nuts and turn it into a small ftp site with a FAQ *and* docs /
specs for different formats, hardware etc.

cheers

Jules
Received on Mon Jan 17 2005 - 06:45:48 GMT