Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!PENNDRLN.BITNET!GTHEALL From: GTHEALL@PENNDRLN.BITNET (George A. Theall) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: "Standard" 360K floppies and the Rainbow Message-ID:Date: 19 Aug 88 15:58:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 42 While others out there might want to confirm me on this, I don't believe it is possible to read "standard" (= IBM PC?) floppies with a Rainbow because of ***hardware*** limitations. That is, the RX50 drives in a Rainbow can only read one side of a disk; the "standard" 360K floppies are double-sided. No software program will be able to read a double-sided disk unless the hardware supports this. There are other possibilities, though. For example, if you're willing to restrict yourself to single-sided PC floppies, you may be able to read from/write to them with the Rainbow drives (just be sure to turn MEDIACHK on and format the disks on a PC first). I've done this using AT disks (use FORMAT /1 on the AT) and heard it works on a PC, too. Of course, this halves the available disk space, but it's cheap. There's also a IBM PC disk drive that can be added to your Rainbow; it's called an I-Drive. As the name suggests, you simply treat it as drive I, and access it as you would the other Rainbow drives. It's available from a couple places that sell Rainbow products. One such place is Suitable Solutions, (408) 727-9090. Another is Rainbo-Works (209) 832-1001. For those who don't mind getting their hands dirty, it is possible to modify the Rainbow BIOS and replace the RX50 drives with more common PC-type drives so that you gain PC data compatibility without losing the ability to use your Rainbow floppies. George /*--------------------------------------------*/ /* BITNET: GTHEALL@PENNDRLN */ /* INTERNET: GTHEALL@PENNDRLN.UPENN.EDU */ /* SnailMail: Department of Economics */ /* University of Pennsylvania */ /* 3718 Locust Walk /6297 */ /* Philadelphia, PA. 19104 */ /* AT+TNet: (215) 898-6741 */ /* ICBMNet: 39 57 N, 75 11 W, 200 Alt */ /*--------------------------------------------*/