[Coco] Read Coco floppies in my PC

[Michael Graham]

I'm not sure how you pulled that off.  When I write with my 1.2mb drive 
(with format /f:360), I always get 'Sector not found' errors reading 
them with a 360k drive.  The other way around works, though, at least 
until I write to the disk with the 1.2mb drive, then the disk becomes 
unreadable.  I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that a 1.2mb 
drive head writes narrower tracks than a 360k drive.  I originally would 
have thought it was just something wrong with my drive, but I did a web 
search after noticing this and found other accounts and an explanation 
on a couple of websites.

The same thing happens when I format a 720k floppy in a 1.44mb drive.  
The 1.44mb drive can read it, but a true 720k drive cannot.  That's why 
I have a 1.44mb drive hooked up to my PCjr as a second drive, even 
though I can only use it in 720k mode;  It makes file transfer much 
easier if I don't have to also write with a 720k drive.

On 3/30/2012 9:53 PM, Chad H wrote:
> I have 9 360k pc-xt drives, all fully tested to read/write disks formatted by 1.2 mb drives without problems....?????
>
> Michael Graham<mkgraham at gmx.com>  wrote:
>
>> Just FYI, most double-density (360k) drives won't read double-density
>> disks written on high-density (1.2M) drives.  I tried this when I first
>> got my PCjr, and it didn't work, so I had to swap the 360k drive back
>> and forth between my PCjr and my old desktop machine until I could
>> source another 360k drive.  I couldn't get disks written in a 1.2M drive
>> to read on my CoCo, either.  However, disks written with a 360k drive
>> will read back just fine on a 1.2M drive, as long as you don't try to
>> write to them.
>>
>> On 3/30/2012 8:20 PM, Bill wrote:
>>> The drives I just got are 1.2Mb, and I have tried several times to format a
>>> 360K disk, but for some reason it won't let me. I type in the command format
>>> b: /f:360 (which SHOULD work), but it gives me an error message.
>>>
>>> Has ANYONE been successful formatting a 360K disk in XP with a  1.2Mb drive?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>>
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