Mail Archives: opendos/1999/04/14/13:23:53
Would the zipdisk need to be reformatted if used in this case? Would it
still be readable on other computers using conventional drivers?
Thanks,
---steve
Matthias Paul wrote:
>
> A long while ago, on Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Ray Greene wrote:
>
> > I have come across a driver called ZapA that will let you access and boot
> > from a Zip drive as though it were a floppy drive - the Zip drive becomes
> > a: or b: - at http://www.blueskyinnovations.com
> >
> > However, it says that MS-DOS will only recognise up to a 32Mb floppy drive,
> > which is a waste of a lot of Zip disk space.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me if OpenDOS has the same 32Mb limit for floppy drives?
>
> As others have already answered, DOS assumes floppies to be FAT12,
> which explains the 32 Mb limit. However, there is also another
> limitation, the maximum count of sectors per track. DR DOS tools like
> FORMAT, DISKCOPY, and DISKCOMP will (currently) support a maximum of
> 36 sectors per track for removable floppy-like media, since this is
> the sector count of 3.5" extra-density (ED) floppies (2.88Mb/4Mb),
> which, however, failed to get a larger acceptance. This is due to
> code allocating memory for track buffering.
>
> Matthias
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
> eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
> Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Steven R. Aines http://www.elves.net wayward AT elves DOT net
The Home for Wayward Elves P.O. Box 3496 Arlington, VA 22203
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