[Coco] Re: some thoughts about reading coco disks on a PC

[Torsten Dittel]

Thanks Robert.

> Maybe the PC controller does not like the missing disk header.

I found the following information
(www.moria.de/~michael/floppy/floppy.ps):

" [...] The NEC 765 controller goes to sleep for about 1.8ms after the
index hole is sensed and expects still to read gap 1 when it wakes up.
It works fine for floppies formatted using the 765, because it will
always generate the format as specified above. The WD 1797 controller,
though, does not have a command to format a track, but writes a given
pattern to the track when formatting it. If the pattern has a too short
post index gap, for example because it is a format which tries to
maximise the usable disk space, the 765 controller will fail to read the
first sector. To make things yet more complicated, the 765A controller
only sleeps for 0.6ms, which means it is less sensitive to shorter post
index gaps. [...]"

This is a good explanation of what is happening. Guess I have to take
the hard way or buy a Catweasel.

Regards,
Torsten