Re: Apple 5.25 floppy drive

[David Wilson <mcs6502@gmail.com>]

On Jan 5, 8:48 am, Eric Rucker <bhtoo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> He is. IIRC, when the drive controller is initialized, it basically
> sends commands to the drive to step down a track 40 times, because it
> has no idea what track it's on, meaning... if you're on track 35 (the
> highest track on a normally formatted floppy, although you can
> sometimes get more than 35 tracks on a floppy,) it will click 4 times.
> If you're already on track 0, it'll click 40 times.

This used to annoy me so much that I wrote a little program to seek
the head to track 40 (or perhaps 39) and I would run this before I
powered the computer off. That way it would seek silently in before
booting when I powered it up the next time.

Slightly later I obtained a newer 1/2 height direct drive FDD unit
which was based on a standard drive with a small 20 pin to 34 pin
adapter circuit board. This circuit used the track zero sensor on the
drive to disable outward seeks so it booted quietly no matter where
the head was left.