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From: dyer@atari.UUcp (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: 809k disk format
Message-ID: <399@atari.UUcp>
Date: Thu, 24-Jul-86 15:24:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: atari.399
Posted: Thu Jul 24 15:24:07 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jul-86 06:16:58 EDT
References: <5408@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 25
Keywords: Does it damage drive?

>    I recently got a PD program for my 1040 which allows you to format
> a disk in 809k format. I'm not sure how this is done, but it really
> slows down drive access time by about half. Does anyone have any
> experiences with this format and does it hurt the drive in anyway?

It will *not* damage the drive.  You may find the disk format
unreliable, however.  The speed problem may be related to
interleave --- it depends on how the program does the format.

Typically these programs format a disk with 10 512-byte sectors
per track.  This could cause problems if your drive's rotational
speed varies more than 1.7%.

Adding tracks is also a no-no.  The drives are spec'd to 80
tracks; any tracks outside that range should not be considered
reliable.

-- 

-Landon Dyer, Atari Corp.		{sun,lll-lcc,lll-crg!vecpyr}!atari!dyer

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