Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!cornell!vax5.cit.cornell.edu!hh2x From: hh2x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm Subject: Re: 1581 disk drive Message-ID: <1990Oct2.152335.232@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> Date: 2 Oct 90 19:23:35 GMT References: <2025@ac.dal.ca> <1990Oct1.222319.23869@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> Distribution: comp Lines: 26 In article <1990Oct1.222319.23869@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>, mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes: > In article <2025@ac.dal.ca> rharrie@ac.dal.ca writes: >>In article , rw2w+@andrew.cmu.edu > (Robert William Weiman) writes: >>> Does anyone know if there is a program (or even if it is possible...) >>> to either read 720K MSDOS format disks in this drive - or to read/write >>> 1581 disks in a standard pc-clone drive (720K or 1.44M). >> >>There is a program called Big Blue Reader, which does exactly this if you have >>a 1571 disk drive (ie. reads/writes 360K PC disks). I am not sure if this >>works on the 1581, or if there is a separate version for that drive. > > As I understand the matter, Big Blue Reader and Run Magazine's IBM > format disk package both work with either the 1571 or the 1581. The > reason that you can't read/write IBM disks with a 1541 (and conversely > that it works with both 1571's and 1581's) is that IBM uses a file > storage scheme alien to the 1541 (but which has been built in to the > other two drives along with the usual Commodore formats). > > Marc R. Roussel > mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca Another interesting tidbit: The 1571 is perfectly capable of formatting MS-DOS disks. The 81 can read MS-DOS disks but for some reason it can't format them. Anybody know why? Aaron Peromsik (DANISH)