Re: 1.44MB disks (was: Forthcoming 0.1.0 release)

[Blaz Antonic <blaz.antonic@havn.com>]

> > I'm not sure what exactly you want to know; if your system boots from
> > 1.44 formatted floppy that means you have a drive that supports (at
> > least) 1.44 MB media.
> The only confusing thing I can think of would be 1.44MB media that's
> formatted with 720kB.
> Such a disk could also be handled in a double density (720kB) drive.

There's shoun't be any problem with that, yes.

> Test: Format a disk with 1.44MB and try to access it.

That's what i do all the time :) All my disk are 1.44 MB and work just
fine (in my 1.44 MB drive) ?!

Anyway, ELKS probe code should be able to handle some really exotic
formats as well (for example single-sided media with 18 sectors per
track and 80 tracks = non-standard 720 KB format) - it does rely on
"standard" formatting scheme though so you could feed it a floppy
deliberately formatted in a way that would confuse the probe (and
consequently cause problems to doshd code). It also counts on sectors
being formatted to 512 bytes (which is normal, standard format, only
exception i can think of is lame copy-proetction some compaines used to
employ .. this is not an option anymore with CDs replacing floppies as
installation media).

Bottom line being: use standard formats and everything should work just
fine :-)))

Blaz Antonic