Date   : Thu, 14 Jul 2005 11:53:16 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: floppy discs

On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 23:15 +0100, Colin wrote:
> Ok, bear with me here as this is getting a little too technical for me and I
> perhaps have a too simplistic view of disks and disk drives..
> I'm going by a PC floppy which you shove in, format it to clear any gunk on
> it and have a disk you can use (regardless of what was on it before).
> I got this pile of disks and I want to scrub everything off them and use
> them for the BBC Micro.
> Is what you are saying that these disks are not compatible with a disk drive
> for the BBC and cannot be reformatted for use with it? (In other words they
> are made differently although they look the same and fit the drive)?

Think of it like putting a 3.5" '720KB' (double density) floppy into a
PC's '1.44MB' (high density) drive - it'll physically fit, but the
actual media's different; assuming you can even format to the 'wrong'
capacity your data won't be particularly reliable. (of course double
density drives haven't been sold on PCs for a good ten years - they're
all high density these days assuming you get a floppy drive at all)

I suppose the same was true of 8" floppies too, in that both hard
sectored and soft sectored disks existed and would fit in any 8" drive,
but weren't interchangeable.

cheers

Jules