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From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: How to read PC format?
Message-ID: <1866@atari.UUCP>
Date: 7 Dec 89 19:58:46 GMT
References: <89340.213356PMR2@PSUVM.BITNET>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 27

PMR2@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
>What differences are there between TOS and PC-DOS 3.5" disk formats?  What do
>I need to do to read files from an IBM disk?

Ideally, the answer is "zero: there is no difference."  In practice, you can
always read PC disks on ST's, but you can't always read ST disks on PC's.

This assumes that the disk is readable at all on the ST: PC 1.44MB
disks aren't.  Use a format which gives 720K or less.

>Also, can anyone out there tell me what the differences between pc-ditto and
>pc-ditto II are? (Besides $225, of course.)

PC Ditto I is all software: the 68000 runs a program which attempts to
do all the same things as an 8086 and some PC hardware.  It's like a
BASIC interpreter, only it's an 8086-machine-code interpreter.

PC Ditto II is hardware: there's actually an 8086 out there to execute 
the 8086 instructions.  The ST is used for I/O: disk, screen, keyboard,
serial, parallel, etc.

(All this from a man who's never used either product...   Informative,
I hope, but not authoritative.)

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt