ugevan@sunybcs.UUCP (11/12/87)
A while ago several people posted that they could write 720K in PC format to the 3.5" drive. I ran out and got a copy of DOS 3.2 but was disappointed when I could not get past the 360K boundary. This is important to me as several friends who traded in their PC's for PS/2's have asked me to transport software on 5.25" to 3.5" putting a copy of 2 of the former on one of the latter. I checked the manual for the Transformer and it claimed that only 360K format could be used. Am I doing something wrong, or do I need some sort of patch ? Thanks, Evan
hrlaser@pnet02.cts.com (Harv Laser) (11/14/87)
ugevan@sunybcs.uucp (Evan Kahn) writes: > > > A while ago several people posted that they could write 720K >in PC format to the 3.5" drive. I ran out and got a copy of DOS 3.2 but >was disappointed when I could not get past the 360K boundary. This is >important to me as several friends who traded in their PC's for PS/2's >have asked me to transport software on 5.25" to 3.5" putting a copy of >2 of the former on one of the latter. I checked the manual for the Transformer >and it claimed that only 360K format could be used. Am I doing something >wrong, or do I need some sort of patch ? > > Thanks, > > Evan I've answered this so many times you'd think I'd have the smarts to keep it on a piece of paper taped to my monitor, but noooOOOOOO... I'll post this publically since it seems to get asked a lot and it may serve to help someone else later: The Transformer manual is wrong. You CAN make 720K disks on Amiga 3.5" drives under Transformer & MS Dos (3.2 or greater) and here's how: You need to change your config.sys file so it contains the following two lines: device=driver.sys /d:1 device=driver.sys /d:2 So see if you have 'config.sys.' on your MS Dos boot-up system disk and if so, add those two lines to the file using any ASCII editor (Sidekick's Notepad works great for this stuff). Make sure driver.sys is on the disk too. Having done that, reboot MS Dos. You'll see some new stuff upon bootup telling you that virtual drives are being setup, probably drives C: and D: Now depending on how you have SetATPrefs configured on your Transformer disk, let's assume you have a DF0: set up as A: and a DF1: set up as B:, you'll now have two new additional assignments, C: and D:. Your A: and B: drivers are 360K Your C: and D: drives are 720K C: and D: are, of course, "virtual" drives, or "phantom" drives. Tell MS Dos you want to format a disk in drive C: It'll ask you to "insert a disk in drive C:" so put a blank floppy 3.5" in DF0: (which is normally A:) and it'll format as 720K. This is all buried somewhere in the MS Dos manual, probably on one of the pages that wasn't "intentionally left blank." :-) Harv Laser - Chairman (sysop) The AmigaZone PeopleLink: CBM*HARV UUCP: {ihnp4!crash, hplabs!hp-sdd!crash}!gryphon!pnet02!hrlaser INET: hrlaser@pnet02.CTS.COM
phils@tekig.TEK.COM (Phil Staub) (11/17/87)
In article <6489@sunybcs.UUCP> ugevan@joey.UUCP (Evan Kahn) writes: > A while ago several people posted that they could write 720K >in PC format to the 3.5" drive. I ran out and got a copy of DOS 3.2 but >was disappointed when I could not get past the 360K boundary. > > Evan Check your DOS 3.2 documentation for something called "driver.sys". It is an alternate disk driver which supports external (3.5, e.g.) disk drives. It is used by making an entry in your config.sys file. Good Luck Phil -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Staub "I do NOT approve. I merely said I UNDERSTAND." tektronix!tekigm2!phils - Spock phils@tekigm2.TEK.COM