Re: apple disks in linux with fdutils

[salfter@chakotay.ncc74656.org (Scott Alfter)]

In article <8elqln$2hg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,  <justinhaynes@my-deja.com> wrote:
>1) What are the specifications for the floppy disk format used with the
>apple IIGS on these old 3.5" drives

800K DSDD, variable speed, GCR encoding.  The variable-speed and GCR bits
will prevent you from making workable disks on an x86 box as the drives in
those boxen use fixed-speed drives and MFM encoding.  If you can track down
somebody with a Mac (the older, the better), you can use that to download
and write the disks.  (If it's new enough that it handles high-density
floppies, you can write those on an x86 box and use a Mac to convert from
high-density to double-density.)

High-density controllers and drives are available for the IIGS, but you
probably don't have one as they were fairly expensive and, therefore, not
too common.

>2) are there any real physical differences in the way these disk drives
>deal with disks compared to drives you would find elsewhere, and where
>can I read about these differences

Yes...see above for the short version.

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