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From: madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Reading/writing 360k diskettes on an AT
Message-ID: <564@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Oct-86 21:51:10 EST
Article-I.D.: bucsb.564
Posted: Mon Oct 27 21:51:10 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Oct-86 03:33:07 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 56


In article <1986Oct26.184138.24015@utcsstat.uucp> spence@utcsstat.UUCP
writes:
>I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has used CPYAT2PC (or any similar
>program).  I use an AT as well as several PCs.  The AT has a 1.2 Mb drive 
>in addition to its hard disk.  I don't want to add a 360K drive, but I do
>want to be able to write 360K diskettes as well as read them.

>Does CPYAT2PC really do the job?  Are there other solutions? 

>Ian Spence {allegra,decvax,ihnp4,seismo,watmath}!utcs!utcsstat!spence

Um, I've been using an AT for two years or so now, and here are my
experiences:

Any 360k diskette written by any reasonably compatible computer will
operate correctly (ie read and write).  Regardless of what IBM says
about diskettes being readable only on AT's after an AT has written
on them, this hasn't been my experience.  I have used both newer and
older (but not first issue, I think) AT's.

You can force the AT to format a 360k diskette by specifying

FORMAT A:/4

I have used this extensively.  It works fine.

Now, I had people tell me that once a 1.2Mb floppy drive writes on
a 360k diskette, it would be unreadable by 360k drives.  I also found
this in one of IBM's manuals.  Like I arleady said, I haven't had a
single problem with reading/writing them.  I have ported 360k diskettes
between an AT and:

   IBM PC
   IBM XT (same thing, I know, but...)
   Tandy 1000
   Tandy 2000
   THE PC+ (your basic real cheap PCompatible)

The point of all this is that you don't NEED a special copy program.
If you want to copy from a 1.2Mb to a 360k (or vice versa),
the COPY command works fine.  If you only have one drive, it still
doesn't matter since PC/MS-DOS checks the formatting before writing.
You can also use the DISKCOPY program, provided the diskettes are
formatted by the same version format program.

Note:  I only used DOS 3.1 on the AT's.  Maybe they fixed something in
       in the routines that determine disk type; I don't think so though.
-- 
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