Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!att!chinet!saj From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Floppy disks on 520ST Summary: Simple way to get PS/2-s to accept ST disks Keywords: floppy disk format Message-ID: <9187@chinet.chi.il.us> Date: 6 Aug 89 17:04:12 GMT References: <426@brazos.Rice.edu> Organization: Chinet - Chicago, Ill. Lines: 13 In article <426@brazos.Rice.edu>, bgr@wild.Rice.EDU (Robert G. Rhode) writes: > transfer purposes. The PS/2 won't read disks formatted by my Atari, but my > Atari will read disks formatted by the PS/2. This phenomenon annoys enough people that it's worth while repeating: nearly any disk formatted on an ST will be handled properly by a PS/2 if the first 3 bytes of the 'boot sector' are made (3 bytes in hex to follow) EB 34 90. I've done this for years with no problems. The reverse process, formatting on the PS/2 and using on both machines, suffers from the famous problem that IBM machines don't put unique serial numbers on each disk. Yeah, CHKDSK recognizes that there's something funny about the disk, and some compatibles won't take them, but for ST - PS/2 exchange, this is enough. Steve J.