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From: mikep@ism780c.isc.com (Michael A. Petonic)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: is it possible to read/write Commodore disks on an IBM PC?
Keywords: disks read write commodore ibm
Message-ID: <10473@ism780c.isc.com>
Date: 2 Jun 88 02:19:22 GMT
References: <4760@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> <719@lakesys.UUCP>
Reply-To: mikep@ism780c.UUCP (Michael A. Petonic)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 26

In article <719@lakesys.UUCP> rickm@lakesys.UUCP (Rick) writes:
 >In article <4760@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> andytoy@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Andy Toy, Applications Support Group) writes:
 >>Does anyone have any software that will read/write/diskcopy/filecopy
 >>commodore format floppies on an ibm pc?  I want to download stuff
 >>to a IBM PC and then write them to floppies that commodore drives
 >>can read without getting someone else to download the stuff for me
 >>since I don't have a modem for the commodore.
 >
 >I think what you need to find out is if your Commodore drive can read ibm
 >formatted disks since the the ibm cannot read the commodore format.

Almost no chance that you can read IBM diskettes in a Commodore disk drive.
There's a better chance that you can write Commodore disks on an
IBM.  The reason for this is because the Commodore disk drive has the
controller built into the disk drive, thereby making it a "smart" disk
drive.  "Smart" disk drives rarely provide operations other than
read sector, write sector, format, etc.  No low level interleave/sectoring
commands.  

I know this is so for the Atari 800 lines, and I'm 98% sure this is
true of the Commodore.  That's why copy protection was so easy to
defeat in the early Atari 800 disk releases, and why it was so
hard to beat when the software manufacturers started customizing their
disk drives to produce the distribution diskettes.

-MikeP