q1rse@turing.newcastle.ac.uk (D.M. Johnson) (09/17/90)
OK, I'm no hardware expert but is it possible to use 1.44MB disk
drives on the Amiga (500).
I can get a drive off a company very cheaply and would like to be
able to use the larger capacity disks.
I can use assembler and C but have not yet got to grips with the
Amiga OS, so if anyone knows of if and where I could get hold of the software
to format/use these disks or have any suggestions to the programming side
I would be most grateful if you could send me some info.
E-mail replies preferred, thanks.
Dave Johnsonbillsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour) (09/19/90)
In article <1990Sep17.142547.9342@newcastle.ac.uk> q1rse@turing.newcastle.ac.uk (D.M. Johnson) writes:
:
: OK, I'm no hardware expert but is it possible to use 1.44MB disk
:drives on the Amiga (500).
:
: I can get a drive off a company very cheaply and would like to be
:able to use the larger capacity disks.
:
: I can use assembler and C but have not yet got to grips with the
:Amiga OS, so if anyone knows of if and where I could get hold of the software
:to format/use these disks or have any suggestions to the programming side
: I would be most grateful if you could send me some info.
It's a hardware problem, not a software problem. The Amiga's floppy
disk interface is set up for the regular disks, not the high density drives.
There are a couple of ways people are trying to get around this limitation,
but so far none that really solve it. The best solution would be an upgraded
Paula chip from Commodore with the capability of reading and writing at the
high density speeds. Another solution would be to interface the HD floppies
via a SCSI interface. You can buy convertors like the OMTI 7400 that allow
you to hook floppies up to a SCSI bus. Yet another solution (YAS?) is to build
a floppy interface board that plugs into an expansion slot. YAS would be to
build a GCR->MFM->GCR convertor for the floppy drive itself and send data
using a 2ms GCR format. The IE drive that's commecially available just slows
the drive down to about 180 RPM (Standard is 300RPM). That allows them to
write more sectors/track to get about 1.5M on a disk, but that doesn't allow
for 1.44M PC compatibility... It's all a real mess right now. I'd wait until
Commodore shows how they're going to do it for UNIX, then go that way.
: E-mail replies preferred, thanks.
:
:Dave Johnson
--
-Bill Seymour ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey
=============================================================================
Bejed, Inc. NES, Inc. Northwest Amiga Group At Home Sometimes
(503) 281-8153 (503) 246-9311 (503) 656-7393 BBS (503) 640-0842