saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) (01/27/91)
It seems that of all the frequently asked questions, the most frequently
asked one is how to get a PC or compatible to read disks formatted on the
ST. The amount of pessimistic mis-information on this subject is
staggering. There are, to be sure, a number of formatting utilities which
take care of the problem. But the quick and dirty solution works just fine:
use a sector editor (DRFLOPPY or MEMFILE on the ST, Norton utilities or
a bunch of others on the PC) to make the first 3 bytes on the disk EB 34 90.
That's the first 3 bytes (in hex) of sector 1 of track 0 (or is it sector 0
of track 1--who defined this numbering system, anyway?). Works with any
reasonable number of sectors per track. Twisted or straight sector ordering
(twisting seems to speed up reading on PCs, also, by the way). Can't say
anything about more than 80 tracks--I never do that one.
Sure there are demi-clones that do bad things with these disks. That isn't
unique to this solution: I have had situations where a HP Vectra, a PC XT
retrofitted with a 3.5" disk and a PS/2 would reject and/or mangle each
others's disks. But this method works with genuine PS/2-s ALWAYS, and with
other compatibles 'mostly'. And I use it CONSTANTLY.
Steve saj@chinet.chi.il.us