Hi Greg.

02-Jun-04 08:31:00, Greg Mayman wrote to Roy J. Tellason



 RJT>> You *can* format a "1.44" as 1.2MB,  and it'll work if the
 RJT>> system is expecting such,  but things sure could get confusing
 RJT>> if you try and put that into another drive or if the system
 RJT>> isn't set up correctly.  Maybe I'll try it one of these days and
 RJT>> see how well it works...

 GM> Hmmm... that's a realy odd size for a 3.5" disk. But I agree that
 GM> it should be possible to format one to that size.

 RJT>> There isn't a 5.25" drive in there,  it doesn't do any hardware
 RJT>> test, and the default is apparently hard-coded into the BIOS.

 GM> One of these goldanged non-standard machines! I've had two of them
 GM> that eventually died on me and couldn't be repaired with standard
 GM> parts....

with the 286 to 486  machines I've had the experience of a cmos reset or
battery failure on theey have all defaulted to A drive being 5.25" HD

some later machines have come up expecting a 3.5" drive dunno if they
detected it or if that's the new default.

 GM> If there is no hardware test, and the disk size is hard-coded,
 GM> then that would explain a lot. Changing back to a 5-1/4" drive
 GM> would allow you to use 1.2m 5-1/4" floppies.

I've not seen it hard coded, but it is often the default size.

I guess the drive size could be probled by timing the rotation speed.
AFAIK the hardware is otherwise digitally idistinguishable between the two
drive types.

 GM> Have you ever tried this? And does the machine accept such a disk?

the hard bit is formatting the disk... Hmm, I guess you could set the CMOS
in a working machine to 5.25" and then just use the dos format prog with
the "U" option.

 -=> Bye <=-

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