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- Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!rutgers!cmcl2!panix!schuster
- From: schuster@panix.com (Michael Schuster)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
- Subject: Re: Can my 3.5" 1.44M floppy handle >9 sectors/track?
- Message-ID: <1992Sep15.132433.28505@panix.com>
- Date: 15 Sep 92 13:24:33 GMT
- References: <1992Sep14.182635.5810@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
- Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC
- Lines: 36
-
- In article <1992Sep14.182635.5810@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> johnson@cps.msu.edu (Graham K. Johnson) writes:
- >I am trying to create a disk for a 780K file that both a 386 and an
- >Atari ST can read. (A double sided disk)
-
- The ST disk controller uses some funny inter-sector timings that
- foul up on PC's. I've run into this too, evne on standard formats.
-
- >I tried formatting a disk to 10 sectors/track on the ST, and on the
- >386 dir and chkdsk worked fine (saying the disk was ~820K), but I
- >wasn't able to write to it (drive not ready error).
-
- That's a function of the problem above.
-
- >I think my drive is a pretty standard internal drive. Is it possible
- >to get a double sided floppy formatted for other than 80 tracks & 9
- >sectors to work on a 386?
-
- Absolutely. You need to use a high capacity formatter like ATFMT or
- FDFORMAT, found on many archive sites and BBS systems. Both include
- a BIOS patch TSR for the PC (needed on some systems) which tell the
- BIOS that "more than 9 sectors per track on a double density disk is
- OK to allow".
-
-
- >
- >--
- > ___ "We dream of the mating season johnson@cps.msu.edu
- > /__ ___ Feel the coming tidal wave Michigan State University
- > <__/raham / We want to run but cannot move
- > K. <_/ohnson Cause we're embedded in concrete" -- Front 242
-
-
- --
- _______________________________Mike Schuster________________________________
- NY Pub. Access UNIX/Internet: schuster@panix.com | 70346.1745@CompuServe.COM
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-