Re: PowerPC Mac's Dont like 800k disks!!

[Programer <progrmer@tiac.net>]

On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Mark Munz wrote:

> I've got a PowerMac 7100/80 (system 7.5) and I haven't had any problems
> with 800k Apple II floppies. I do know it's very slow to write to them,
> especially if you are using subdirectories.

well its probably slower cuz apple took out the SWIM (sp?) chip, this 
changed the speed of the disk drive spin depending on where the head's 
where so that they could get more data into the larger outer rings (this 
is something that IBM clones never did thats why they are 720k vs our 800k)

so now in order to write to 800k disks it has to take the bitstream thats 
for the disk and change the order all around or some kind of funk in 
order for a constant speed drive to work right....and it dont work 
perfectly :(

I've had 800k disks not initalize (i tried 2 or 3 times on them too) and 
when we take them to a diff machine no problems....very very very annoying...

Marek
progrmer@tiac.net
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~progrmer