Date   : Fri, 03 Aug 2001 00:02:13 +0200
From   : Isabel Cisternas & Robert Schmidt <rschmidt@...>
Subject: Re: Stealing a proper disc image format

Thomas Harte wrote:
> It does seem impossible without one of the hardware hacks (e.g. additionally
> connecting pin 24 or 34 of the floppy disc, I forget which, to the status
> line of the parallel port and having super timing capbility) due to the
> usual FM vs MFM and gap data requirements. Vincent's obviously a very
> devious person.

I thought so, too. 
 
> Incidentally, do you need two drives of the same size, or will any two do?
> Also, without knowing much about the way the PC handles things, presumably
> they both need to be on the PC cable that seems to be for floppy discs
> rather than the more general one? Otherwise a floppy disc and hard (or ZIP)
> disc would seem to fit the bill and everyone has those.

They need to be two floppy drives (which means one cable on normal
PCs).  There might be further requirements.  So the downside is clear:
these days, actually very *few* people even have *access* to a PC with 2
floppy drives.

The existence of 2 drives is critical to the ingenious way Vincent
solved the problem.  

Besides reading Amiga and other "exotic" formats, future releases of
Disk2FDI is likely to be able to replace the functionality of the old
"CopyIIPC Option Board", if any of you remember those.  The CopyIIPC
software, when combined with this board, was able to copy most, if not
all, copy protected PC game floppies.
 
> Its better than trying to achieve something myself. 

Definitely!

> -Thomas (who is still quite clueless about disc drives, but will soon
> overcome this)

Your rate of progress (on all emulation issues) is very impressive!


Cheers,
Robert