#: 8418 S10/OS9/6809 (CoCo)
    25-Nov-90  23:39:43
Sb: #8388-Disto HD
Fm: Ken Scales 74646,2237
To: LUTE MULLENIX 70721,2230

Lute -

Sounds like the RS-BASIC physical format worked OK for you, but some of your
Hmode (dmode) values were set up for using the drive under MS-DOG rather than
OS-9 when you did the Logical (OS-9) format.

You see, most retailers are advertising the ST296N as 84.9 Meg, which it is
when formatted with 34 sectors of 512 bytes on each track (MS-DOG).  But under
OS-9, we use 256-byte sectors, and due to the additional inter-sector overhead
of having lots of smaller sectors, we only get about 64 sectors (not 68) per
track.  This gives a total capacity of about 78.7 Meg.

But not to worry -- we have a lot less waste due to the way that OS-9 allocates
the disk space (note that 50% of the time the second half of that 512-byte
sector wouldn't be used, for example!), so you may actually get as much (or
MORE) usable space than your MS-DOG counterpart would have.

Following are suggested Hmode/Dmode values to use when you do the OS-9 Logical
format of the ST296N:
  /h0
  cyls=820 hds=6 step=0 sectrk=64 sectrk0=64alloc=16 ilv=3
  initcmd=00 inittbl=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

By the way, I have a new version of the SCSI driver which will do the full
format under OS-9, so you don't need that RS-BASIC thingie. Beta-version
available from me at 613-836-6305, after 9 PM EST.

Regarding your question in msg #8267 re: "no-halt" -- yes, my version of the
driver will allow you to use Sterm in the "-f" mode.

Good luck... / Ken