[Coco] double sided disks

[Frank Pittel]

On Sat, Jul 02, 2005 at 11:14:45PM -0700, Neil Morrison wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Frank Pittel" <fwp at deepthought.com>
> 
> 
> > When I got the drive it was suppose to have been "moded"
> > by cloud9 to function as a double sided drive. However when
> > trying to execute "dir1" nothing seems to happen on the drive
> > and eventually it times out with an error.
> 
> Did you DSKINI 1 first?

Yes. I get the same error with both the 502 and modded 501 drive.

 
> > Another problem (and in my opinion a bigger problem) is that when
> > I try to "flip" the ds-dd floppies that I have over and use the other
> > side I get an IO error from dskini0. After my first try I remembered
> > that I needed to cut out a notch on the side of the disk or when I
> > flipped the disk the drive would detect it as being write protected.
> > Even after cutting a notch on the side of the disk in the same location
> > as the original on the disk to no avail.
> 
> The notch is only needed to format and write a flippy which is a very bad
> idea anyway. Did you punch an extra hole in the floppies for the index?
> 
> I would never try to use the back like that. It was an el cheapo idea when
> floppies were $3+ each.

That explains it. There's no second index hole in the disks. There should be
no problem with using "back side" of the floppy. Afterall it's exactly what
a double sided drive would do. In any case without an index hole I'm not
going to be able to "flip" the disks. :-(



Frank