[Coco] Reading Coco disks in PC

[gene heskett]

On Friday, March 30, 2012 10:48:22 PM Bill did opine:

> O.K., just to be able to read and write Coco disks in my “CocoPC”, I
> bought (3) 5 ¼” 1.2Mb floppy drives. Checked them out, and they work
> great.

If those are truely 1.2 meg drives, they are turning at the wrong speed for 
the coco as they are turning 360 rpms.  There should  be a jumper on the 
drive which will slow it to 300 rpms, at which point the coco, because the 
floppy controller is stuck at a 250 kilobaud data rate, they then become 
720k disks under os9, not the 1.44 megs you would expect.  These are also 
96 tracks per inch drives, and while there are options you can set when 
running os9 which will cause them to double step and READ 48 tpi disks, the 
heads are too narrow to write to the 48 tpi disk and that 48 tpi disk will 
be trashed because the narrower head does not fully erase the old data.

WRITE PROTECT ANY 48tpi disk before inserting it in one of these drives, it 
will save you many a future monologue of swear words.

Once slowed down to 300 rpms, they will work for rsdos disk usage but will 
still be limited to single sided 35 track, 160k disks, not 720k.  You may 
have to use disks labeled HD, but never QD, they are too hard magnetically 
to work well for long periods of time, they will be under recorded and will 
fade.

> Now, I just need to know which files I need to run to read/write to/from
> Coco disks. I’ve been told to use this, then someone tells me NOT to use
> it, so I need to know definitely, what file/files do I need to use?
> 
With these drives, this isn't really the right question.

TBT, you need to use os9/nitros9 to use these drives to their full 720k 
capacity on the coco.
 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> --
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> Coco at maltedmedia.com
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Cheers, Gene
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