Re: disk stuff (Re: GS, //e, and mystery cards)

[Gene Irwin <girwin@frugal.com>]

Derek Peschel wrote:
> 
> In article <5nm4ru$ev3@news.Hawaii.Edu>,
> Galen Tatsuo Komatsu <gkomatsu@Hawaii.Edu> wrote:
> 
> >...any special trick to booting 16 sector disks on a ][ and ][plus?
> >(I grew up on the //e with the privileges of whopping 140k disks, 64k
> >on board, lower-case text, auto repeat, and these keys: `[]\ =^)
> 
> No, there's no special trick.  It works the same way as on a //e -- stick the
> disk in, turn the computer on, close the drive door.  The only snag would arise
> if you have a ][ with the old disk-controller ROMs that can't read 16-sector
> disks.  In that case, booting them is rather difficult. :)
> 
> The TRS-80 would happily erase disks if you had them in the drive and turned
> on the power.  None of the Apples ever suffered from such a silly problem.
> 
> (Well, OK, there is _one_ special trick: use a utility program like Bag of
> Tricks to change the sector interleave on Tracks 0, 1, and 2 to make DOS
> boot faster. :) )
> 
> Don't expect the disk controller to figure out whether the drive is empty and
> go on to the next drive (or slot).  In general, it won't do that -- it will
> simply try to boot off of Drive 1 until you hit Reset or turn the computer off.
> Your snazzy controller may fix this problem but I doubt it.
> 
> If you were referring to booting _13_ sector disks, then there are two methods.
> 1) Use the BOOT13 program on the DOS 3.3 System Master. 2) Use the BASICS disk.
> 
> (BTW, I have *never* understood the reason for the existence of that BASICS
> disk -- anyone care to explain?)
> 
> -- Derek


The 'BASICS' disk loads the ramcard with the appropriate basic (int on a
][+, fp on a ][), write protects the card, and then boots a 13 sector
disk.
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