From: erikv@dhhalden.no (ERIK VASAASEN) Subject: Re: Fdformat questions. Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1993 16:08:04 GMT
In article <23u8fv$lne@tribune.usask.ca> neudorf@cs.usask.ca (Jason Neudorf) writes:
>From: neudorf@cs.usask.ca (Jason Neudorf)
>Subject: Re: Fdformat questions.
>Date: 6 Aug 1993 18:38:55 GMT
>This allowed me to format AND mke2fs a couple of disks at higher than
>normal densities (1.44meg on 5.25", 1.68meg on 3.5"), but I'm not sure how
>reliable this is. When I tried to use more than 80 tracks I got errors.
I'm sitting here right now and formatting 3.5"DD disks as 829440 bytes
disks (1620 sectors, 10 sectors a track, makes 81 tracks I guess). The
number of tracks you can put on the disk are dependent on the drive, you can
sometimes get 83 (On _some_ machines this works well..), but if you want to
be able to read them on an _amiga_, you have to use only 81 tracks or so. (I
was amazed when I found out that PC disks formatted with 81 tracks, more
sectors a track, and smarter interleaving (gains some 20% in speed) could be
read under Amiga Dos 3.0.)
It would be a really good idea if someone found a rawrite like utility that
enabled you to write 1.44 mb to 5.25 disks, as this would make distribution
a hole lot simpler for people with only 5.25 drives.
BTW: I'm using fdfroat version 1.8, and I think it's availabe as fdform18.
lzh or something like that. (Under ms-loss. sigh)
I've been using this program for a couple of years, and it isn't less
reliable than the speed / size gain.. Problem is: Don't lend it to someone
who will think something is wrong (you have to run a TSR under DOS) and run
fixdisk.
Erik
______
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