mackay@iisat.UUCP (Daniel MacKay) (07/21/88)
I think (hope) that my last plea for help got eaten by the net demons. Here's my problem. A friend has just come back from doing his thesis in Germany, where they typed the thesis in Wordstar, under CP/M, on a //e. He asked me if I could transfer the files to a Mac. I said, no problem. But it turns out that the disks were formatted on what's called a "ERTH 4 460K" drive- they are not normal Apple // disks, so of course none of the utilities will even look at them. Has anyone heard of these drives? Knows who makes them? Has one? If a any of the above, please drop me a line and I can help this guy out- save having to retype (ugh) the thesis. Thanks. --- +---------+ IIS Public Usenet | _ | From the Halifax, Nova Scotia | (_)===| Disk of ... Canada | | Daniel mackay@iisat.UUCP +---------+ ...{utai,uunet,watmath}!dalcs!iisat!mackay
KAPFFER@DMZRZU71.BITNET (Matthias Kapffer) (08/05/88)
Daniel,
sorry for the late reply - I already tried two times to reach you (as an
answer to your first plea) on the direct way without success so here it comes
again.
I'm not sure if my information will help you but there is a manufacturer in
West Germany called Erphi which stands for "r"-"phi" ( <- the greek letter );
it is pronounced nearly the same as ERH-4 (in German).
They produce a disk controller for 80 track/double sided drives (for example
TEAC FD55F, if my memory serves me right); the resulting format uses 16
256-byte sectors per track yielding 640K on a disk. Since such a
controller/drive combination is caplable of reading & writing Apple 5.25" 140K
disks (with auto density detection in software) I'm sure they use Apple
standart sector layout and GCR (group code recording). Patch software for DOS
3.3, Apple Pascal and Microsoft CP/M is also supplied (and I think there is a
newer version of the controller with ProDOS support and an autopatch feature).
I know these facts because a friend of mine has this piece of hardware.
Please write me if you need more information.
Matthias Kapffer
<KAPFFER@DMZRZU71.BITNET>
PS: About the 460K vs 640K game:
64 is pronounced in german as four-and-sixty (if I translate it back); may
this be the source for a misunderstanding ?
(I don't know *any* drive using a 460K format !)