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From: jim@world.std.com (James D. McNamara)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Making a floppy drive ignore high density hole
Message-ID: <1990Jul28.044622.7670@world.std.com>
Date: 28 Jul 90 04:46:22 GMT
References: <803@digi.lonestar.org> <1184@gold.GVG.TEK.COM> <598@fnx.UUCP>
Organization: Software for the People
Lines: 20

In article <598@fnx.UUCP> del@fnx.UUCP (Dag Erik Lindberg) writes:
>There is indeed a BIOS constraint.  But also a hardware constraint.  Mainly,
>if your machine has a FD controller that can handle 1.2Meg 5.25" disks, then
>you can handle 1.44M 3.5" disks, since the recording format is essentially
>the same!  Yes, of course there are some minor differences, stress *minor*.
>del AKA Erik Lindberg                             uunet!pilchuck!fnx!del

BIOS constraint, indeed.  I plugged a 3.5" drive into a Zenith, at
work.  Had the vanilla controller, but the DOS 3.2 ROM chips (yeah,
drag) only knew about 360K and 1.2M formats.

No prob!  Formatted and did r/w to a 3.5" with 1.2M capacity -- how's
that for something completely different?  Well, a few P.O.'s later the
DOS 3.3 ROM chips were in, and life returned to 1.44M-normal.


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