Re: Is ProDOS supported in OSX?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Scott Alfter wrote:

>In article <4Gydne_yUJe19YWiXTWJjQ@comcast.com>,
>Bill Garber <willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote:
>>This is not anything strange. I had to do the same thing back when I
>>transferred files from the 586 ( a 486 hot chip ) to my 8088 or 386, I had
>>to format the disks on the older machine first then they worked fine after
>>writing to them on the more advanced machine. If there is a reasonable
>>explanation for this, I'm all ears. ;-)
>
>This shouldn't have been an issue with creating disks for your 386, but if
>you were moving data on 5.25" DD floppies between an XT (with a DD drive)
>and something newer (with a HD drive), you ran into a problem with the head
>width of the high-density drive being half that of the double-density drive. 
>Formatting/writing to a DD disk in a HD drive was an iffy proposition if you
>need to read the disk in a DD drive...maybe it'd work, or maybe it wouldn't.

The best way to do this is to _erase_ the DD floppy before formatting
and writing it on the HD drive.  This ensures that there is no interfering
information in the portion of the track not written by the HD drive (that
the DD drive will read).

A demagnetizing coil is best, but, in a pinch, a powerful permanent
magnetic field can also be used effectively.

The ubiquity of pre-formatted disks makes just using a "virgin"
disk a non-option.

-michael

Check out amazing quality 8-bit Apple sound on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/