[Coco] 8inch floppy on a coco

Gene Heskett gheskett at shentel.net
Thu May 17 14:13:13 EDT 2018


On Thursday 17 May 2018 12:12:21 rietveld rietveld wrote:

> I managed to get it to spin up but i cant get the disk to format    I
> was hoping to just format it as a 35 track disk just as a proof of
> concept
>
Most of those did not have a speed control, and IIRC the default speed is 
360 revs, a std floppy is 300, so writing a track, means either 
shortening the sector count of a track to prevent the end of the track 
from overwriting the beginning, or finding a way to slow the spindle to 
300 revs.

> ________________________________
> From: Coco <coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com> on behalf of Salvador Garcia
> via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> Sent: May 17, 2018 10:41:02 AM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Cc: Salvador Garcia
> Subject: Re: [Coco] 8inch floppy on a coco
>
> Actually, hardwarewise, the two floppies are not all that different. I
> recall back in the early 90s we got hired by bank to come up with an
> interface so that they could stop using 8" drives with their Phillips
> PTS system. Instead, they wanted to use a high density 1.2M floppy
> drive. My colleague, who was responsible for the hardware, found that
> most of the signals were compatible, expect a for a few (maybe even
> just one). The incompatible signal(s) just needed to be inverted.
> Softwarewise, it was not straightforward at all. The floppy's format
> used a standard IBM format which was different than anything used by
> MS-DOS PCs. I had to bypass the ROM BIOS (venerable INT 13h) and write
> my own drive access routines (using ROM BIOS code as a template).
>
> Salvador
>
>
>     On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, 9:26:17 PM CDT, Sean
> <badfrog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  I didn't think an 8 inch drive would work with a CoCo?  Isn't it a
> completely different data rate and size than what a disk controller
> supports?
>
> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 7:28 PM, rietveld rietveld
> <rietveldh at hotmail.com>
>
> wrote:
> >  I apologize for how badly my phones 'auto correct ' Un corrected my
> > post
> >
> > I am just really excited to finally be able to use these drives
> >
> > Sent from my BlackBerry Passport Red Edition.
> >  Original Message
> > From: rietveld rietveld
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2018 8:26 PM
> > To: Coco mailing list
> > Reply To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> > Subject: [Coco] 8inch floppy on a coco
> >
> >
> > I finally scores some new old stock 8 inch disk. I am hooking an
> > eight months inch drive to my coco as we speak.
> >
> > I am going to post a video showing how ridiculously cool this looks.
> >
> > Sent from my BlackBerry Passport Red Edition.
> >
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> >
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-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>


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