Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!linus!alliant!lackey
From: lackey@Alliant.COM (Stan Lackey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: Problem with Atari's new XF551 DS/DD disk drive
Message-ID: <1410@alliant.Alliant.COM>
Date: 11 Mar 88 21:39:42 GMT
References: <3075@voder.UUCP>
Reply-To: lackey@alliant.UUCP (Stan Lackey)
Distribution: na
Organization: Alliant Computer Systems, Littleton, MA
Lines: 14

In article <3075@voder.UUCP> kevin@voder.nsc.com.UUCP (The Last Bugfighter) writes:
>   I read something recently which points out a possibly serious problem
>for some users of Atari's new XF551 disk drive.  
>Hard sectored disks use the holes to mark where each sector starts.
>... you cannot write to the disk when it's in upside down.

I can suggest a potential solution to this potential problem.

Suppose the 551 used soft-sectoring when in 810 or 1050 mode, and 
hard-sectoring when in 551 mode.

The 551 would ignore output from the LED and thus be fully backward-compatible.

-Stan