Date   : Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:08:29 +0100
From   : mike@... (Mike Tomlinson)
Subject: Why did Acorn ADFS only allow 640KB on a floppy?

In article <4C53E12D.2020200@...>, Rick Murray <rick@...>
writes

>If we really want to throw the cat among the pidgeons, we can look at 
>the Amiga's "forget the FDC, we'll do it ourselves" approach which 
>squeezed something like 880K onto a conventional disc

IIRC the Amiga formatted tracks 81 and 82, which was outside the drive
manufacturer's spec, but most drives (especially the Citizen ones
Commode used) would allow it.


>PS: One of my old college friends was a hardcore Amiga fan... While I
>     never really thought that highly of the machines, some of the
>     add-ons were incredible. There was a box that plugged into the side
>     with a button that, when pressed, would freeze the machine. You
>     could snapshot memory, compare a snapshot with live, modify memory
>     or registers... it was the closest I've seen to a full-blown
>     emulation 'monitor' running on live hardware.

Very similar things were available for the Beeb and Spectrum.  Vine
Micros's Replay for the Beeb and ?the Multiface for Spec.


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