Re: Apple// CP/M question

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:

> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
> > 2. Even if Apple // disks had been compatible with the rest of the
> > world on the sector level, MSDOS still uses a different logical disk
> > format than CP/M.
> 
> The fact is that there was no standard disk format for CP/M on 5.25"
> disks, or for that matter the occasional machine that used 3" or 3.5" inch
> disks.

We have a CP/M kitset machine at work (in a suitcase!) which we used
actively until about 1990, and have occasionally used since then.

It has 8" and 5.25" drives.  The standard CP/M disk format was a single
sided single density 8 inch disk (40 tracks, 128 bytes per sector, but I
forget how many sectors per track: possibly 32, which would make it 160
KB).  This was the format used by Digital Research to distribute the
base operating system.

This particular system also supported double sided double density 8 inch
disks (77 tracks, 512 bytes per sector, 17 sectors per track, 2 sides,
for 1309 KB).  It also supported high density 5.25" disks with the same
format.