Starting over with 8" drive on PC

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Are you sure about this?  I thought the only difference between 160K
> disks and 180K disks was 8 sectors per track vs 9 sectors per track.
> I don't remember an FM/MFM difference (but I could easily be wrong).

Only thing that you are wrong about, is thinking that you might be wrong.


> Also, if you are doing this with an older motherboard (no onboard
> floppy controller in particular), it might be easier to be sure
> exactly what FDC you are using.

The "real" IBM FDC, and most others with a 765 chip, are hard wired for
MFM, and needs some [minor] modifications to be able to do FM.
Look for a 37C65 chip.

> All I can suggest is to focus more on your choice of FDC and
> application software and less on the floppy mechanism itself.

If you suspect DRIVE problems, you could try hanging the drive on the NEC,
and see if it works there.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com