Re: Slot 'extender' dev cable

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <1170471939.795636.303130@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 3, 11:24 am, Tristan Mumford <xtristan.xmumf...@xgmail.xcom>
> wrote:
> 
>> Very interesting. What does it take to use the extra tracks on the apple end
>> of things?
> 
> A patched copy of DOS 3.3 or ProDOS. Easily found on the major archive
> sites.
> 
> Matt

At least in the case of DOS 3.3, it doesn't need to be patched to use
those extra tracks.  As long as the contents of the VTOC of the DOS
3.3 disk contains correct information about the disk geometry, and as
long as the floppy disk reader is capable of accessing those extra
tracks, standard DOS 3.3 will successfully use them.

So then the question becomes how to create such a disk: how do you
write that correct info to the VTOC, and how do you format those extra
tracks.  That's normally done while formatting the disk. so if you
want to use DOS 3.3 for this, the format part of DOS 3.3 needs to be
patched.  But formatting the disk could also be done with a separate
utility program.

If ProDOS is as good as DOS 3.3... :-) ...then ProDOS too should be
able to fully access a ProDOS floppy with extra tracks at the end
(assuming that the ProDOS disk contains correct info about its
disk geometry).

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Grev Turegatan 40,  SE-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW:     http://stjarnhimlen.se/