🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <833@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
>In article <1993Jan8.225002.4186@aw2.fsl.ca.boeing.com> ckr2196@aw2.fsl.ca.boeing.com (Caryn K. Roberts) writes:
>>From article <817@ulogic.UUCP>, by hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman):
>>> PC disks are formatted in concentric circles.  Mac disks are
>>> formatted in a spiral (like your old black vinyl records).  (This
>>> is what let Macs put 800k on a floppy that the PC could only get 
>>> 720k on.)  The Mac drive (actually the superdrive) can be controlled 
>>> to read concentric-formatted disks.  I do not believe that there is
>>> a way to control the standard pc drives to read spiral-formatted
>>> disks.  There may be special hardware out there that can do it.
>>
>>Mac disks are formatted just like MS-DOS disks except that density varies
>>per track on Mac disks. In early Macs the disk speed was varied, but 800k
>>and 1.44m discs accomplish this by varing the data read/write stream.
>
>Oh well, I got the details wrong.  The concept -- that mac disks
>used special formatting that standard ms-dos machines would be unlikely
>to be able to read remains.  Although apparently the more recent macs
>have abandond the variable-speed drive concept and use more standard
>formatting (from what I gather on the parallel leaf from my msg).
>
>Would it be possible to, on a track-by-track basis, change the
># sectors per track on an ms-dos floppy drive?

The COPY II PC OPTION BOARD allows you to read and and write to MAC disks.  It
is connected between the controller and the drive.  I guess it adjusts the
speed of the drive.  According to the back of the box it is supposed to be
compatible with most software.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Horner (rhorner@sirius.UVic.ca)                    University of Victoria
4th Year Electrical Engineering Student                  Victoria, BC, Canada
              If you don't like my spelling, use a real dictionary!