rchrd@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Richard Friedman) (02/01/90)
I just noticed something stnge with the floppy drive on my SparcStation. I wrote a low density floppy disk on my machine, formatting it first using "fdformat -l" . It wrote without complaint, and i was able to read it back into my machine without a problem. I then gave the disk to a friend to load on his machine. When he tried to read it on his machine it complained about bad format and requested the second volume to be loaded (??). However, on his machine we then formatted a scratch low density floppy , and then tried to read my disk and it worked. It seems that fdformat sets some hardware flag (perhaps) to low density, so if you eject the just formatted disk and read another disk it will read the second at low density. But initially, the sparc will try to read the floppy high density, even if it is a low density disk. (Am I making sense.?) Anyone had any similar experience. We could find no enlightenment in the manuals. I will give 800-SUN a call. /s/ rchrd <=> Richard Friedman <=> rchrd@well rchrd@well.sf.ca.us | {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!rchrd [Pacific-Sierra Research / Berkeley CA] (415) 540-5216 (The usual disclaimers apply - I speak only for myself!)