Re: ADT questions

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

KPR <krauer@rpmtec.com> wrote:
> David dos or pronto dos ( one of them ) supported 40 tracks.. then
> there was the trick to format a data disk and recoup the first 3
> tracks by not putting a dos image on it..  40 Tracks * 16 Sectors per
> track = 640 sectors - boot sector and catalog track ( 17 sectors ) =
> 623 Sectors = 155.75k.. that sure beat the 128k of usable space per
> dos formattted disk..

Standard DOS is okay with all of that except the use of track zero.  When
track 0 appears in a track/sector list, it indicates the end of the list.
Zapping the boot sector and marking tracks 1&2 free was fairly common.

Standard DOS will play along with the other changes.  Another typical one
was to reduce the length of the catalog track to 2-3 sectors, assuming you
had a small collection of large files rather than a large collection of
small files.

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