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From: meulenbr@cst.prl.philips.nl (Frans Meulenbroeks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: TT HD floppy
Message-ID: <meulenbr.676621960@cstw18>
Date: 11 Jun 91 06:32:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: cstw18.meulenbr.676621960
References: <meulenbr.676277155@cstw163> <1991Jun8.131536.7626@rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Sender: news@prles2.prl.philips.nl
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seimet@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Uwe Seimet [Chemie]) writes:
]With the TT and MegaSTE-versions delivered in the moment you can use a HD
]floppy drive right from the start, you have just to plug it in.
]If you use HD discs in this drive, TOS first recognizes a read error. It
]automatically switches the speed of the floppy controller to 16 MHz and tries
]again. So some kind of the hardware presented in ST Computer 1/90 (HD drives
]for the ST) is built in.
]Nevertheless I found two problems. My controller doesn't work correctly with
]HD discs if the machine has warmed up. Apparently the controller doesn't like
]16 MHz too much. If you use programs like ROMRAM or ROMSPEED you get problems
]writing on these discs. It seems as if this is a timing problem, because after
]moving the rom to the fast ram the floppy subroutines of TOS are to fast and
]report a timeout.
]To get a button "High Density" in the desktop format dialogue you have to set
]configuration switch #6 to ON. Selecting this button to format a HD disc fails
]on TOS 3.01 but wait for TOS 3.05 ...

Does this mean that there is a HD drive installed.
The latest I heard was that apparently the current 1772 floppy disk
controller is only rated for 8 mhz, and you'll need a 16 Mhz version
for HD drives. It seems that Western Digital does not manufacture such
a version, but that atari bought the rights and is going to manufacture
its own chip. 

--
Frans Meulenbroeks        (meulenbr@prl.philips.nl)
	Centre for Software Technology