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From: boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: A couple of questions
Message-ID: <9002011954.AA16642@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 90 19:55:08 GMT
References: <1981@mrsvr.UUCP>
Reply-To: boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd)
Organization: Florida State University Computer Science Department
Lines: 27

In article <1981@mrsvr.UUCP>, news@mrsvr.UUCP (News Manager) writes:
>
>1) I recently found on a local BBS a program that supposedly formats Atari
>disks to 1 Meg (on a DS drive).  Since I personally have never succeeded in
>formatting past 810K I was wondering if this program could really work or if
>it could really screw up a disk.
>
This may be possible with some really packed disk formats, but the media 
would be highly unreliable.  I have seen formatters go out to 83 tracks,
11 sectors reliable ON PARTICULAR DRIVES.  You just have to experiment
and see how much stuff you can cram on a disk reliably.  I have found
that 82 tracks, 10 sectors, twisted works fine for me and most of the
other drives I encounter, but I still run into one occasionally that will
not read a disk.  It seems to be the track number that gives drives 
problems, anything above 80 is not guarenteed.  I use 80 tracks, 10 sectors
twisted for anything I would cry over if I lost, just to be safe.


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         Mickey Boyd                 |    "Nobody can be exactly like me.
                                     |      Even I have trouble doing it."
             FSU Comp Sci            |              - Tallulah Bankhead
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