Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!fauern!fauern!csbrod
From: csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: disc testing
Message-ID: <2444@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 20 Feb 90 12:38:43 GMT
References: <690@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> <34378@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Organization: CSD, University of Erlangen, W-Germany
Lines: 34

mwnewman@watmsg.waterloo.edu (mike newman) writes:

>I've used various 10/11 sector-per-track formatters.  However, I stopped
>using them a while back after I seemed to be getting more disk errors
>then other family members on the same machine.  Errors included desktop
>claiming a non-empty disk was empty (although if booted from, auto programs
>would work) - usually cured by a cold boot; erasure of the boot sector -
>which I was able to fix by copying a boot sector from another disk of the
>same format; and the final straw for me - complete erasure of all fat and
>directory sectors on the disk.

I've written the first German 11 sector formatter called HYPERFORMAT and
have more than two years of experience with this program and with the
whole problem. The problems you're describing are very typical for
boot sector viruses! 10 sector disks are perfectly safe. 11 sector disks
might introduce some difficulties if you own a drive that spins too fast.
This can be cured by adjusting the rotation speed internally.

>Another thing: I remember reading in an old copy of the developer docs or
>the abacus disk book (sorry can't remember which, I don't have it here)
>about the minimum space needed for the control information (required for
>each sector) and the acutal available space per track, and concluding that
>11 sectors is impossible: it won't fit (?!?), and 10 is very tight.
 
The Abacus disk book tells you a lot of stories, and we had a lot of
fun with it laughing all night... 10 sectors aren't tight. 11 sectors
are, but it works if you have a drive that spins at the correct speed.

BTW: We have expanded disk capacity up to 14 sectors per track (needs
a little hardware hack), and it works fairly safe. We even have connected
1.44 MB HD disk drives to standard STs (again, with a tiny hardware hack),
and now we're pushing those disks to 21 sectors per track. Ain't that nice?

Claus Brod