[Coco] MacOS was Re: AmigaDOS was Re: model 4 cp/m

[Dan Olson]

> IIRC the Amiga drives aren't "standard" drives either.  I don't remember
> the exact details, but I do believe that you can control more parameters
> of the Amiga drive and controller than you can on the PC.  Here's a
> quote from Wikipedia:

The Amiga drives are standard, actually.  There's only one small 
difference, they use both a "disk change" and "ready" signal, where most 
other computers only use on or the other.  One of these signals is on the 
pin normally used for density select on a high density drive.  I've got a 
few Teac 720k drives and by setting the jumpers for DC and RY I was able 
to get them to work with the Amiga with no problem.  Unfortunatly most 
newer drives don't have any jumpers at all :(

> "The Amiga floppy controller was much more flexible than the one on the
> PC: it did not impose arbitrary format restrictions, and foreign formats
> such as the IBM PC could also be handled (by use of CrossDos, which was
> included in later versions of Workbench

This is very true, it was the floppy *controller* that allowed the Amiga 
to do everything it did, mainly by using the space normally left between 
sectors.  The Amiga had more useable space on a floppy disk than a Mac 
did, and without the use of a custom variable speed disk drive!

 	Dan