[Coco] Frustrated in Seattle

[Joel Ewy]

Ed Orbea wrote:
> I am getting frustrated with my attempts to utilize 3.5" floppy drives
> with NitrOS9. It is not the fault of the O/S, rather it is my lack of
> knowledge, so I am asking for some help or guidance.
> ...
>
> So, for those of you who are using 3.5" media with NitrOS9:
> (1) What floppy drives are you using (720 or 1.44)?
Older 1.44M drives that are not broken WRT having proper drive select
switches or jumpers.
> (2) What media are you using (720 or 1.44)?
720K.  I snatch these disks up wherever I can find them for use on the
CoCo and the Amiga.  I have a friend who sometimes brings me boxes of
old floppy disks that are being taken out of service where he works. 
Most are HD, but they are peppered with a few old 720K disks.  Sometimes
driver disks for old mice and sound cards of a certain era came on 720K
floppies.  I have sometimes found people still using old 720K floppy
disks on a more modern PC that has 1.44M drives.  I'll trade them a
bunch of HD disks for the old floppy.  I trawl the local thrift stores
and sometimes come up with a few odd floppies.  I have found several
unopened, shrink-wrapped boxes of 360K and 1.2M 5.25" disks at the
thrift stores, and someday I might score some 720Ks.  A while back I was
given an Amiga 500 with a couple hundred floppies.  I backed up most of
the disks (especially things I wasn't that interested in) to image files
using the Amiga Explorer program from the Amiga Forever CD, freeing up
the media for reuse. 

Some of the disks are bad, but there seems to be a lower failure rate
than with HD floppies.  And depending on where the bad sectors are, a
disk that won't format to 880K on the Amiga, or 720K under OS-9 might
work as a 35-track disk under RS-DOS.
> (3) Did you modify your 80dd descriptor and if so what did you change?
I don't remember exactly.  I believe I have mine set to 135tpi, but I
also think that more recent NitrOS-9 has changed the definition of those
bits in the descriptor, so I'm always having to run dmode to access my
old disks.  PITA.
> (4) Did you have to do any "jumpering" or pin-covering on your 3.5"
> drives?
No, because I use drives that have proper drive select switches, and no,
those aren't so easy to find anymore.

JCE
> (5) What question do I need to ask, that I am ignorant about, and
> thus, don't know to ask?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>
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