Re: Apple// CP/M question

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3A11FA9E.1E9C354C@inetnebr.com>,
Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
 
> David Empson wrote:
> 
>> Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> 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).
> 
> You are quite right about the 8" format, which is why I didn't mention it.
> As far as I know, the SSSD format for 8" disks was created by IBM (on what
> machine I haven't the faintest idea), however, the strength/weakness of CP/M
> was that each hardware vendor could create whatever format they wished. Kaypro
> used (I think) the Xerox 850 format. I have a piece of software that will
> copy files from various CP/M 5.25" formats, if I remember correctly there
> are something like 40 different formats that are options.
 
I have an old piece of PC software, called "Alien", which copies from
and to several hundred different 5.25" CP/M formats.   It is even capable
of formatting disks in most of these CP/M formats.  It did a lot of veyr
low-level accesses to the PC disk controller.
 
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