[Coco] format memory (was) Gotek floppy emulator

[Theodore (Alex) Evans]

On 02/16/2016 03:45 PM, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> I've never seen a floppy disk controller that didn't require writing an
> entire track during format, but perhaps they exist.

The floppy controller for the NorthStar Horizon allows you to format 
each sector separately.  You can mix single density (FM) and double 
density (MFM) sectors on the same track and even wait until you are 
going to use them to format the sectors.  Of course it uses hard 
sectored floppies, which makes everything completely different.

> The Coco CPU is not fast enough to piece together the proper byte
> sequence for a format-track command on the fly, so there's really no
> choice but to stage the entire image in memory.