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From: rick@wet.UUCP (Rick Rutledge)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Making a floppy drive ignore high density hole
Message-ID: <1361@wet.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 90 20:07:13 GMT
References: <11547@ingr.com> <1990Jul19.021714.10040@world.std.com> <803@digi.lonestar.org>
Reply-To: rick@wet.UUCP (Rick Rutledge)
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco
Lines: 36

Matthew Frohman writes:

>I have a pair of those floppy drives which insists on detecting for me,
>if there is a hole in my floppy disk.  I would like to install a toggle
>switch to enable/disable the detector.  Ideally, I would like it to have
>3 positions: HD, LD, or auto detect, but I don't know if that is possible.
>Simply having 2 position (detect, no detect) would be sufficient.  I need
>this because I have disks formatted at 720K for my laptop that my PC insists
>are HD, since they have a hole in them, so I cannot write info to that disk
>on my PC without scrambling the FAT.

If the disks have a hole in them, they were manufactured with high-density
media in them (unless you've found a mfr. who is totally ignorant of the
standard).  It would be in your best interest to use disks at the `density`
for which they were manufactured, but that's up to you.

It sounds more like an OS problem than a drive problem, really.  The system
should really check for that hole when formatting the disk - a preformatted
disk should force the OS to check the *disk* for the format; the holes don't
tell you, for instance, whether the disk is formatted on both sides or not.

For the simplest solution, look to your old 5.25" floppy disks.  Cover the
hole in the disk with a floppy disk write-protect tab.  (The thin plastic
tabs are better than the foil or paper ones.

>BTW.  I have a HD 5 1/4 and a HD 3 1/2, but I really want this for the
>3 1/2, though I would thing it would be the same process for both.

I'm not sure I understand how this would apply at all for the 5.25"
drive...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Rutledge        {hoptoad|ucsfcca|claris}!wet!rick            rick@wet.UUCP
"Voici le secret." dit le renard.  "On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.
L'essentiel est invisible aux yeux." -Antoine de St. Exupery, _le Petit Prince_