Date   : Wed, 23 Oct 1991 05:54:57 GMT
From   : csus.edu!csusac!sactoh0!ijpc!ianj@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu (Ian Justman)
Subject: Re: general (Floppy Drives on the Xerox 820-II)

duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu writes:

> In article <Niqu02w164w@ijpc.UUCP>, ianj@ijpc.UUCP (Ian Justman) writes:
> 
> > The only soft-sectored drives that don't use the index/sector
> > hole that I know of are Apple II, Commodore, and Atari.
> 
> Minor Point:
>   Actually, C= does use the index/sector hole when performing the initial
> format.  After that it uses some bytes that indicate the start and end of eac
> sector.

OK, I didn't now that.  I blithely assumed that the Commodore
didn't use the index holes.

My apologies to the person I said my original comments to.  I had
forgotten about the drives like the Micropolises (or was that
Micropoles?  :-) ).  Anyway, I have little, if not no, experience
with hard-sectored systems, even though I own part of one (an old
North Star).  But with the Apple, I know for absolute sure that
all the sectoring, in fact, every bit of the formatting including
how to deal with the stepper motor, including finding sector zero
is done entirely in software, in Apple's infinite wisdom to make
everything as proprietary as humanly possible.  I know that well
because I own several, and I have CP/M for it in several forms.



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