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From: cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: controlling the Amiga drive
Message-ID: <10621@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 18-Dec-86 14:38:39 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.10621
Posted: Thu Dec 18 14:38:39 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Dec-86 02:01:39 EST
References: <1109@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 19
Summary: Yes, you can read foreign formats


Yes, you can read foreign formats, but there are a couple of conditions
to be met. First, the drive must be constant speed, since there is 
no way to change the speed of the Amiga drives (except with a screw
driver) and I am pretty sure the PLL loop circuit on the floppy is
only expecting a 250K Hz clock rate. I believe the new Mac+ floppies
(800K) are constant speed but I may be wrong on this. You can certainly
read PC/DOS or CP/M format disks. The trick is to use the trackdisk
device in RAW mode, so that the entire track is read in and left 
unprocessed. You can then interpret the data any way you want. If
you are really ambitious you could write a foreign format 'handler'
in which case the system would treat the disk as though it were a
native format. 


-- 
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.