Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!xanth!flounder!scott
From: scott@flounder.cs.odu.edu (Scott Yelich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: I love it!
Message-ID: <7436@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 89 17:44:27 GMT
References: <7367@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <11830032@hpldola.HP.COM>
Sender: news@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Reply-To: scott@cs.odu.edu (Scott Yelich)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va.
Lines: 32

In article <11830032@hpldola.HP.COM> ritchie@hpldola.HP.COM (Dave Ritchie) writes:
>/ hpldola:comp.sys.atari.st / scott@cs.odu.edu /  8:11 pm  Jan 24, 1989 /
>
  [... my original letter deleted ...]
>>   Scott D. Yelich                           scott@cs.odu.edu  [128.82.8.1] 
>
>  These are 2 seperate problems. The use of tracks > 80 is dependent upon
>the particular drive mechanism used - some will tolerate stepping past
>track 80, some won't. The use of sectors > 9 per track is dependent upon
>the rotational speed of the particular drive - 9 works best between different
>computers, 10 will work with most, 11 will work with drives that are slower
>than the standard 300 RPM (slower -> more time under head -> more time
>for FDC chip to convert). I usually stick with the standard 9/80, being in
>a post-college phase that allows me to buy disks, etc. :-> 10/80 should
>be fairly safe I would think. How much TOS support non-standard formatting,
>I do not know.
>					dave

My drive formatted and used 11/82.  Once and a while when doing a lot
of reads-- the drive would make a clanking noise...  That's when I decided
that 82 was too much..  I still used 11/81.

I have since found the name of that track offset-- TWISTED.  I think what
it is supposed to do is scramble the formated sectors on the tracks to
allow the required access-time to decrease.

But, I don't see how this can be considered dangerous!  All you are doing
is changing the sequential order of the formated sectors!  (The old
8bit atari did this just fine)


   Scott D. Yelich                           scott@cs.odu.edu  [128.82.8.1]