Moll wrote:
Michael J. Mahon wrote:Moll wrote:I know there's programs that format 5.25" disks for ProDOS without "grinding". Hyper-Format comes with FrEdWriter and its format starts with a "reboot click". Also, "Pirate's Friend" (which looks like an old version of Copy ][ Plus?) sets up the drives with a "reboot click" too, rather than a fast *GRIND*.I wonder how difficult it would be, considering I know very little about the disk ][ and DOS 3.3, to write a DOS 3.3 disk formatter, - doesn't need to make bootable disks - that doesn't *GRIND* the disk drive.Any reliable format routine must assume that there is no (accurate) track information recorded on the disk, and so must find track 0 absolutely, by seeking "past" the stop. You can choose the kind of noise you get, but, if your drive doesn't have a track 0 sensor that disables stepping (as most drives don't), you will have to get a recalibration noise of some sort when formatting.I don't mind the reboot click, which is also a recalibration noise, but the GRIND is real loud and annoying, and was always my pet peeve with the ][, especially the //c's drive and the Unidisk/Duodisk.
I'm curious about what you mean by the "reboot click". The only way to guarantee that a drive without a track 0 sensor is at track 0 (all drives used with Apple II's) is to seek more than 40 tracks toward 0. If the disk head happens to be positioned near track 40, then you won't hear many clicks against the track 0 stop. If it is closer to track 0, then you'll hear a lot more clicks. Again, in principle, the reboot process could trust the "last track" information maintained by the previously-running OS, and only seek back to where it expects track 0 to be, but that is more trust and more knowledge of various OS's than can be expected (unless the reboot is requested through the currently running OS and it takes the trouble to do somethng besides jumping to the boot ROM). -michael New Applesoft BASIC interface for NadaNet networking! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/