paone@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Phil Paone) (07/24/86)
I recently got a PD program for my 1040 which allows you to format a disk in 809k format. I'm not sure how this is done, but it really slows down drive access time by about half. Does anyone have any experiences with this format and does it hurt the drive in anyway? Phil Paone
dyer@atari.UUcp (Landon Dyer) (07/24/86)
> I recently got a PD program for my 1040 which allows you to format > a disk in 809k format. I'm not sure how this is done, but it really > slows down drive access time by about half. Does anyone have any > experiences with this format and does it hurt the drive in anyway? It will *not* damage the drive. You may find the disk format unreliable, however. The speed problem may be related to interleave --- it depends on how the program does the format. Typically these programs format a disk with 10 512-byte sectors per track. This could cause problems if your drive's rotational speed varies more than 1.7%. Adding tracks is also a no-no. The drives are spec'd to 80 tracks; any tracks outside that range should not be considered reliable. -- -Landon Dyer, Atari Corp. {sun,lll-lcc,lll-crg!vecpyr}!atari!dyer /-----------------------------------------------\ | The views represented here do not necessarily | "If Business is War, then | reflect those of Atari Corp., or even my own. | I'm a Prisoner of Business!" \-----------------------------------------------/