Date   : Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:31:37 +0100
From   : zeem.uk@... (Alex Taylor)
Subject: Omniflop

2009/3/29 Jonathan Graham Harston <jgh@...>:
> Unfortunately, as is common in the brain-dead, strip down all
> functionality to make it dirt cheap, PC world, USB external floppy
> drives translate all access commands from the computer into
> accesses to DOS formatted disk systems.

That can't be entirely true, because I've often used a Toshiba-branded
USB floppy drive on various Macs to read and write HFS-format disks,
including reading and writing images with Apple's Disk Utility. I've
got a pile of them at work, they came with Toshiba Satellite A10
laptops from about 2003. I think they're actually made by Y-E Data.

2009/3/28 Anders Carlsson <anders.carlsson@...>:
> For
> various reasons Windows 2000/XP doesn't support DD floppy drives

They do, only Microsoft introduced the artificial limitation of
removing the ability to format them from Explorer's format disk
dialogue box. I usually format them with WinImage by creating a blank
image and writing it to the disks. I've used this successfully with
both 80- and 40-track disks, the 40-track ones being for an Amstrad
PC1640 using a drive pulled from a scrap Amstrad PC1512. I seem to
remember that although FORMAT /f:720 won't work from a command prompt
window (for a 720K 3.5" disk), FORMAT /t:80 /n:9 will.

I'll need to check my motherboard tomorrow because it's my work PC so
I'm not there right now ... sometimes I go in on a Sunday morning to
sort out the personal stuff I've stored there but I can't be bothered
this morning...

-- 
Alex Taylor