Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!acorn!moncam!harry From: harry@moncam.co.uk (Jangling Neck Nipper) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Floppy disks on 520ST Message-ID: Date: 6 Aug 89 14:53:28 GMT References: Sender: harry@moncam.co.uk Organization: Monotype ADG, Cambridge, UK. Lines: 14 In-reply-to: f-leoe@IFI.UIO.NO's message of 5 Aug 89 05:55:41 GMT In article f-leoe@IFI.UIO.NO (Lars-Erik 0sterud) writes: TOS 1.4 formated disk will work all right on IBM... I small change in the format or boot-sector i think.... I've no idea about 1.4, but I've noticed that the version of TOS I'm running creates FAT tables with a media descriptor of 0xF7, and uses a 512 byte cluster size, 5 block FAT tables, root 11..17, data 18..1439 (for double sided). Now PC's won't recognise this, but if you format a 3.5" disk on a PC, you get descriptor 0xF9, and the ST *will* access these correctly. So the answer for anyone wishing to maintain compatability in TOS < 1.4 would be to create the file systems on the PC. Of course it's a simple matter to write a program to create an 0xF9 file system anyway.