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From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Description of disk format?
Message-ID: <21713@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 19 May 91 03:52:13 GMT
References: <1991May17.160053.13799@iesd.auc.dk>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 26

In article <1991May17.160053.13799@iesd.auc.dk> dorf@iesd.auc.dk (Thomas Dorf Nielsen) writes:
>He needs a thorough(?) technical description of the Amiga disk format,
>in order to be able to write a driver for another computer, making
>that other computer able to do R/W on Amiga-formatted disks.

	Unless his hardware can do full-track raw reads/writes (i.e. no MFM
decoding/encoding, raw bits straight to drive including clock bits), then
it's hopeless.  Most disk controller chips just don't have that sort of
function as an option.  However, the Amiga can read/write just about any
format the drive hardware can handle, since encode/decode is software based
(of course non-Amiga formats can be slow to encode/decode).

>So, in what book/article/paper can I find such a description? (All
>about tracks, blocks, sectors, TPI etc.)

	There's a (terse) description on pages 992 and 993 of the Amiga Rom
Kernel Manual: Libraries and Devices, revised edition.  This covers sector
layout, not filesystem layout (documented in the Bantam AmigaDos Manual).

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system
is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult."
(From "The Zen of Programming")  ;-)