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From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 1.6 meg drives and the Amiga
Message-ID: <2615@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 17:19:14 EST
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2615
Posted: Mon Oct 26 17:19:14 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Oct-87 20:42:59 EST
References: <4534@zen.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 33

in article <4534@zen.berkeley.edu>, c164-1bj@cordelia.berkeley.edu (Jonathan Dubman) says:
> 
> The elation in switching from Apple 143K disks to Amiga 880K disks has now
> worn off, and I am once again becoming greedy.
> 
> I want the 1.6 meg high-density microfloppies. ... [How about it?]
> 

Well, maybe.  The 2 meg (unformatted) floppies weren't designed into 
Paula, so it's not as simple as dropping in a new device driver....

> Question for AmigaDOS Gurus: (Is that last word a noun or a verb??!)
> 	How hard would it be to adapt the software and the (tricky part) disk
> 	interface to facilitate the megafloppy?  I know AmigaDOS supports
> 	generalized devices, so that shouldn't be the tough part.

... but if you are willing to build your own 2 meg floppy interface card,
no big deal.  Very similar to adding on a hard disk, and with the same basic
problems.  You'd first of all need a PIC with the 2 meg controller on in.
And a bigdisk.device or something similar to drive it.  Nothing the OS would
have any problem with.  Of course, you'd need new floppies, too, since the
current ones aren't the 2 meg kind.  If you want the same drive to work
for both densities based on the disk plugged in, you'd probably have to do
more extensive software modifications.  I don't know of anyone working on
this just yet, but it certainly can be done now with the proper add-ons
under the current OS.

> 	*&Jonathan Dubman
> 	Busy Berkeley CS student with a semantic analyzer due Wednesday
-- 
Dave Haynie     Commodore-Amiga    Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh
   "The B2000 Guy"              PLINK : D-DAVE H             BIX   : hazy
    "Computers are what happen when you give up sleeping" - Iggy the Cat