Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!basset.utah.edu!hollaar
From: hollaar%basset.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Lee Hollaar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Floppy Disc Drives, MS-DOS
Summary: Needs a new device driver
Keywords: device drivers.
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.075154.29777@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 14:51:54 GMT
Expires: January 1, 1990
References: <39968@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: hollaar@cs.utah.edu
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 18

In article <39968@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> vreed@ocf.berkeley.edu (Vincent Reed) writes:
>	Fellow Apollo users;
>Can you help me? We have some DN3500's with NEC 11__ floppy drives that we'd
>like to install Mtools 2.0(an MS-DOS disk manipulation utility) on. 
>Unfortunately, for the software to do its job, the physical format of the 
>drive must be one of the MS-DOS types(e.g. 80tracks, 2heads, 15sectors).
>Since our drives are 160 track, we need a driver that can make the drives
>emulate the 80 track models(BY double stepping tracks, or whatever else).

The format used by Apollo for floppy disks is quite different than used by
MS-DOS, so a new device driver would be necessary even with standard floppy
drives.  You have to take control of the floppy disk controller chip (which
is different that the chip controlling the hard disk, which makes things a
little easier).  I did this a couple of years ago when I wrote a utility
program (PCdisk) that allowed the standard Apollo floppy drive to read and
write MS-DOS floppies.

			Lee Hollaar