WALDI@DHDIHEP1.BITNET (11/06/87)
Date: 6 November 1987, 10:38:51 SET
From: Roland Waldi phone (6221) 564334 WALDI at DHDIHEP1
Inst. fuer Hochenergiephysik
D-6900 Heidelberg
To: INFO-ATA at SCORE.ST
I tried the "200% MS-DOS compatible" disk formatter recently posted
to this group: It fails to create disks readable by my IBM PC
(the same as DCFORMAT 2.2)! However, disks formatted on the PC
still can be read/written on the Atari without any problems, even
new folders can be created on the ST and read on the PC!
Also, if I copy those disks with a special copy program (designed
for backup of copy-protected disks), the copies made (formatted)
on the Atari work fine. So I decided to investigate further, and
actually found the difference, which makes normal Atari-formatted
disks fail on the PC: The IBM-PC's 3 1/2" drive needs a larger Gap
before the first sector of the disk (usual error message: "sector
not found"). The Atari formatting programs have about 70 bytes before
the first sector header, my IBM disks have more than twice that much!
Obviously, the Atari gap is too small for the IBM controller, which can
only read sectors 2...9 of a track. Since this may vary between
different drives due to hardware tolerances, many people may be
quite happy with DCFORMAT or IBMFMT -- others (like me) cannot
use it.
Roland Waldiuace0@uhnix2.UUCP (ATARI Computer Enthusiasts) (11/15/87)
A new version of DC Formatter will be posted soon to solve the problem of formatting IBM disks. We finally figured out the problem with previous versions. Look for DC Formatter v2.3 soon. - Mike Vederman BTW - also, look for a full working version of DC Transfer soon. -- #-----------------------------------------------------# University (of Houston) # It is morally wrong to let a sucker keep his money. # Atari Computer #-----------------------------------------------------# Enthusiasts (UACE) Use Atarinet: for help, interactively send a message to UH-INFO@UHUPVM1