🚀 go-pugleaf

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!)