Date   : Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:36:16 -0500
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: PCs and BBC disks (was: Re: Guess the disk set...)

Jason Watton (Lycos) wrote:
>> I went through another umm... 13 boards
> Thanks for the information/evidence. ;-)

No prob...

I've been using Dave's testfdc utility to test boards for SD/DD/128byte 
support; see http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img for the utility and a 
registry of results for different system boards.

> I am *still* collecting statistics for how widespread FM support is in PCs. 
> Some nice people have even sent disks in the post for testing!
> 
> What about reading (you mention writing)? Can you give (an) example(s) of 
> boards that don't seem to work?

You know, I've not really tested reading independently of writing. Whilst 
archival-only is broadly useful (in that it gets data off the old media into 
some form where it can be preserved), personally I've been looking at systems 
that can recreate the data that they read.

Unfortunately I don't have a record of what system boards that I've tried in 
the past didn't work; it's only with this recent batch that I've started 
recording the negative results. Even then I couldn't find a way of recording 
the I/O boards as typically they don't have any distinguishing manufacturer / 
model number stamped on them :(

The Mitsumi/Newtronics drive findings surprised me, because I wasn't expecting 
that the choice of drive made a difference as well as the choice of FDC.

cheers

Jules