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Article #86241.2meg <-> 360k
From: John Wavrik
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1986 07:08
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1986 07:08
26 lines
2053 bytes
2053 bytes
Several times in my life I have been in the position of listening to a
lengthy explanation of why it is impossible to do something I've already
done. I still don't know how to react.
According to the explanation recently given by John Plocher, it should
be impossible to do the following: write a track on a 360k drive, rewrite it
with a 1.2 meg, get a good read on the original 360. If one is to believe
the pictures, the 1.2 will record on only a small part of the 360k track --
so an attempt to read will produce a garbled mixture of new information from
the 1.2 and old from the original 360. I have no difficulty following the
theory!
When I recently acquired a Tandy 3000 someone suggested I get one of each
kind of drive. They gave essentially the same warning about track width.
I did not follow the advice -- I got two 1.2 meg drives even though I need to
exchange data with an older machine using 360k. I found it is fairly easy to
avoid having both machines write to the same disk -- but the recent postings
aroused my curiosity. I ran some tests using Forth (so I could be sure that the
same tracks were being used by both machines). I could not produce any problems
no matter what.
I think that anyone should use caution when writing to one disk with two
computers -- there is always the possibility that the heads on one machine are
mis-aligned. I can only report that there must be something wrong with a
theory whose predictions are not supported by experiment.
--J Wavrik
UCSD
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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcc6!sdcc3!ma168x From: ma168x@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU (John Wavrik) Newsgroups: net.micro.pc Subject: 1.2meg <-> 360k Message-ID: <3667@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU> Date: Thu, 30-Oct-86 02:08:41 EST Article-I.D.: sdcc3.3667 Posted: Thu Oct 30 02:08:41 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 30-Oct-86 23:22:44 EST Organization: University of California, San Diego Lines: 26 Keywords: AT disk drives