Re: floppy question of the hour

From: Gene Heskett
Date: Wed May 28 2008 - 17:58:48 EST


On Wednesday 28 May 2008, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 03:38:05PM -0400, Phillip Susi wrote:
>> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>> >Just do what the Amiga did: Read the entire track into a buffer in
>> >memory, then deal with the sectors, and write the entire track back. :)
>>
>> IIRC, there is no way to detect the interleave factor that the media has
>> been formatted with, unless you maybe try several and see which one
>> reads fastest.
>
>Yeah, the Amiga trick wouldn't work. The Amiga had no interleave. It
>didn't even have sector gaps. Just 11 consequtive sectors worth of data
>per track and one gap at the end of the track. I really doubt any other
>system could emulate that floppy access method without extra hardware.

The drives, at least for the 880k format, were std chinon 3.5" drives. However,
I was under the impression there was about a 20 byte gap with the sector number
and a short A5 A5 synch string between the sectors. I still have a big box
A-2k, with one DD drive, and one of the special 1760k 150 rpm HD drives too.

But its been nearly a decade since an HD failure prompted me to store it in the
basement and learn to really use the first linux box I ever built in 1998,
RH-5.1 on it. So my memory could be hazy, after all its 73 years old &
counting. :)

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My philosophy is: Don't think.
-- Charles Manson
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