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From: elliot@xenna.encore.com (Elliot Mednick)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Disk space for FREE (was Re: super high density formatters)
Message-ID: <13289@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 16 Nov 90 18:42:48 GMT
References: <0093FCB0.70C886E0@router.jhuapl.edu> <1990Nov16.035524.22022@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <4319@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>,<17184@hydra.gatech.EDU>
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Reply-To: elliot@xenna.encore.com
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In article <0093FCB0.70C886E0@router.jhuapl.edu>, tcs@router.jhuapl.edu writes:
> In article <17184@hydra.gatech.EDU>, scott@kong.gatech.edu (Scott
Coulter) writes:
> >In article <4319@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl> hrbaan@praxis.cs.ruu.nl (Hayo
Baan) writes:
> >>There is a better way to gain
> >>diskspace : use DD disks, punch a hole in it (just opposite the
write-protect
> >>tab), and format it to HD. This way you gain 100% disk space for FREE!!!
> >>[...]
> >>it is perfectly safe (I did this
> >>to about 60 disks, and they did not give one format/read/write/... error at
> >>all!. The only recomendation I have is that you should use GOOD
disks (3M or
> >
> >I have no doubt that this worked fine on your machine, but have you used
> >those disks extensively on a machine other than the one they were
> >formatted on?  I find that this is where you usually run into trouble
> >when formatting DD disks as HD.  Has anyone else experienced this?
> >
> >Scott D. Coulter
> >scott@cc.gatech.edu
> >Georgia Tech Software Engineering Research Center
> 
> [...]

The orginal poster asked about the higher density formatters, not about
DD/HD disks.  Did he?

I used FDFORMAT for a year on an XT to format 360K floppies to 410K.
I has NO problems with any of the disks.  I DID find the I HAD to
run FDREAD for it to work (this was rev. 14; I don't know why rev. 16
no longer requires it!).  But this is no big deal; it's only 100 bytes.

Later, I had a laptop with 2 720's and no hard disk.  Again, I used
FDFORMAT to format the 720's to 820 (or something like that) with
no problems.

Now that I have a real computer :=) I don't have as much need to 
up the 1.44 to 1.7.

By the way, there is another shareware program called MAXI which I
could not use because it tried to add 2 more tracks.  FDFORMAT
was much more versatile.  I highly recommend it.
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