6 ms·

I vaguely recall that people used to get their atari floppies and format in a MSDOS machine as it would yield a slightly bigger capacity - something to do with

by Zenst 6y ago

I vaguely recall that people used to get their atari floppies and format in a MSDOS machine as it would yield a slightly bigger capacity - something to do with default format on DOS using more tracks. That was until alternative floppy formatting tools came about on the Atari scene and there was one that was also great for copying discs - going to bug me to recall it's name, but was one of those utils that had a cult rep in its day in atari land. [EDIT ADD] Ok had a dig around and the tool most used was Fastcopypro - https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/disks-tools https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/disks-tools, was useful to do fancy formats for extra capacity if you had good quality discs as well as copying/backing up discs

tomxor 6y ago
That screenshot of fastcopy just brought memories flooding back! I was one of the strange kids in the 90's who had an Atari while everything else in the world was windows, the FAT format was invaluable for me as I could easily transfer files between home, school and other kids computers... I didn't appreciate at the time that this kind of compatibility wasn't a given.
bregma 6y ago
Both DOS and Atari used FAT format. The capacity was identical, but MS-DOS would have trouble reading Atari ST floppies because Atari had followed the published standard and wrote two copies of the allocation table to the disk, and MS-DOS would only write one and overwrite the second one with data and corrupt the disk. The 'extra space' was the space that was supposed to be taken by the redundant file allocation table. The rule was if you wanted to move files between systems, you had to format the floppy on MS-DOS, then you can use it everywhere. If you formatted on the Atari and used it on MS-DOS, you would end up using it nowhere.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I didn’t grow up with floppies, so pardon my ignorance, but two questions: (1) which FAT? I figure it can’t be FAT32, but that still leaves FAT12 and FAT16, both of which Microsoft helped develop. And (2) since Microsoft helped develop it, were they just not following their own spec? Because that doesn’t make sense (not that you’re wrong).
  - code_duck 6y ago
    Of course MS didn't care about their 'standard'. They assumed they're the only ones using it and/or don't really care about breaking other systems.
    - Miraste 6y ago
      Sometimes they broke other systems on purpose, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code.
      - kabdib 6y ago
        The other direction, too: "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run!"
  - Zenst 6y ago
    FAT afaik is also known as FAT12 - nice explanation in the wiki over the differences and some history aspects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system
  - bregma 6y ago
    MS-DOS was also not the only DOS on the market. DR-DOS was very popular at the time of the Atari ST. As far as I know DR-DOS also followed the published specification and Digital Research (DR) was Microsoft's biggest competition. Atari also used Digital Reasearch's GEM as their "desktop" GUI. GEM was a direct competitor to Microsoft's new Macintosh-killer product called "Windows". CorelDraw and WordPerfect used GEM, MS Word and MS Excel used Windows. Draw your conclusions.
colejohnson66 6y ago
As someone who didn’t grow up with many floppy disks, how was one able to format a floppy to have a different capacity? I know there’s different “formats” such as DOS, C64, etc, but I don’t understand why? I have heard about how formatting a floppy involved placing the tracks and how modern hard drives have “hard sectors”, but for some reason, it’s not “computing.”
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Basically your floppy disk is formatted on each side with a number of tracks, each containing a number of sectors of a given size. [1] The standard 720KB 3.5' floppy disk as used by the Atari ST used 80 tracks of 9 sectors. With these tools you could format with, say 11 sectors instead of 9 and boost capacity to 880KB (I think the Amiga was doing that as standard). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats
  - foobarian 6y ago
    On top of that some tools (I used fdformat) shifted the sectors to speed up sequential reads, i.e. have the first sector of the next track rotate in under the r/w head right as the head arrives. Edit: another unrelated practice was buying up cheap(er) single-density disks, which were distinguished by the lack of a marker hole opposite the r/o protection slider, and used only one side of the medium for data. By drilling it out, one could trick the drives into using both sides, which usually worked out just fine. Mentioned here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk
    - Zenst 6y ago
      Ah yes, interleaving of the sectors. More prominant with early HD's and using tools like spinwrite to optimise the interleaving. Today it's all 1:1 as processing from the heads just been fast enough for decades to handle the speeds. Spinwrite still exists, though in the early days/versions it was the golden tool for tuning up a system and could make huge differences. Like double your drive speed and more in some instances, but talking late 80's early 90's here when interleaving was thing and mid 90's 1:1 became the norm and made it moot. https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm
fullstop 6y ago
I remember seeing a tool that could be used to punch a hole in floppy disks in order to double the capacity. I didn't have such a tool, but I did have a cheap soldering iron. I ended up with a bunch of 3.5" floppy disks with holes melted through them. Thinking back on it now, I'm surprised that I didn't damage the disk with the heat of the iron. Then again, maybe I did and didn't notice because I was 12.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Flip-it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fullstop 6y ago
    https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102711303 https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271130... Might have been that brand. I remember seeing what it did and then figuring out how to get a hole in the 3.5" disk without cracking the plastic.
- bentcorner 6y ago
  I've seen it used - IIRC the problem is that the media isn't rated for the storage that you're now asking of it, so while it may survive being written/read a few times, it'd fail sooner.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Can confirm. I used to drill holes with a... well, a drill. Totally worked. Capacity increased. Until one day your files were corrupted. And that day often came soon!
  - monocasa 6y ago
    It might fail sooner, but you were banking on it essentially just being a binning distinction, that they didn't really do any testing either way and just stuck them in cases with or without the hole depending on what they thought they could sell at the time. Did I lose files on fake doublesided disks? Yes. Did I lose files on real doublesided disks? Also yes.
rzzzt 6y ago
I remember a tool called 2M on DOS, which allowed formatting 1.44M disks to non-standard capacities, up to ~1800k or so...? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)

by Zenst 6y ago

tomxor 6y ago

That screenshot of fastcopy just brought memories flooding back! I was one of the strange kids in the 90's who had an Atari while everything else in the world was windows, the FAT format was invaluable for me as I could easily transfer files between home, school and other kids computers... I didn't appreciate at the time that this kind of compatibility wasn't a given.

bregma 6y ago

Both DOS and Atari used FAT format. The capacity was identical, but MS-DOS would have trouble reading Atari ST floppies because Atari had followed the published standard and wrote two copies of the allocation table to the disk, and MS-DOS would only write one and overwrite the second one with data and corrupt the disk. The 'extra space' was the space that was supposed to be taken by the redundant file allocation table. The rule was if you wanted to move files between systems, you had to format the floppy on MS-DOS, then you can use it everywhere. If you formatted on the Atari and used it on MS-DOS, you would end up using it nowhere.

colejohnson66 6y ago
I didn’t grow up with floppies, so pardon my ignorance, but two questions: (1) which FAT? I figure it can’t be FAT32, but that still leaves FAT12 and FAT16, both of which Microsoft helped develop. And (2) since Microsoft helped develop it, were they just not following their own spec? Because that doesn’t make sense (not that you’re wrong).
- code_duck 6y ago
  Of course MS didn't care about their 'standard'. They assumed they're the only ones using it and/or don't really care about breaking other systems.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    Sometimes they broke other systems on purpose, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code.
    - kabdib 6y ago
      The other direction, too: "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run!"
- Zenst 6y ago
  FAT afaik is also known as FAT12 - nice explanation in the wiki over the differences and some history aspects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system
- bregma 6y ago
  MS-DOS was also not the only DOS on the market. DR-DOS was very popular at the time of the Atari ST. As far as I know DR-DOS also followed the published specification and Digital Research (DR) was Microsoft's biggest competition. Atari also used Digital Reasearch's GEM as their "desktop" GUI. GEM was a direct competitor to Microsoft's new Macintosh-killer product called "Windows". CorelDraw and WordPerfect used GEM, MS Word and MS Excel used Windows. Draw your conclusions.

colejohnson66 6y ago

As someone who didn’t grow up with many floppy disks, how was one able to format a floppy to have a different capacity? I know there’s different “formats” such as DOS, C64, etc, but I don’t understand why? I have heard about how formatting a floppy involved placing the tracks and how modern hard drives have “hard sectors”, but for some reason, it’s not “computing.”

mytailorisrich 6y ago
Basically your floppy disk is formatted on each side with a number of tracks, each containing a number of sectors of a given size. [1] The standard 720KB 3.5' floppy disk as used by the Atari ST used 80 tracks of 9 sectors. With these tools you could format with, say 11 sectors instead of 9 and boost capacity to 880KB (I think the Amiga was doing that as standard). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats
- foobarian 6y ago
  On top of that some tools (I used fdformat) shifted the sectors to speed up sequential reads, i.e. have the first sector of the next track rotate in under the r/w head right as the head arrives. Edit: another unrelated practice was buying up cheap(er) single-density disks, which were distinguished by the lack of a marker hole opposite the r/o protection slider, and used only one side of the medium for data. By drilling it out, one could trick the drives into using both sides, which usually worked out just fine. Mentioned here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk
  - Zenst 6y ago
    Ah yes, interleaving of the sectors. More prominant with early HD's and using tools like spinwrite to optimise the interleaving. Today it's all 1:1 as processing from the heads just been fast enough for decades to handle the speeds. Spinwrite still exists, though in the early days/versions it was the golden tool for tuning up a system and could make huge differences. Like double your drive speed and more in some instances, but talking late 80's early 90's here when interleaving was thing and mid 90's 1:1 became the norm and made it moot. https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm

fullstop 6y ago

I remember seeing a tool that could be used to punch a hole in floppy disks in order to double the capacity. I didn't have such a tool, but I did have a cheap soldering iron. I ended up with a bunch of 3.5" floppy disks with holes melted through them. Thinking back on it now, I'm surprised that I didn't damage the disk with the heat of the iron. Then again, maybe I did and didn't notice because I was 12.

IncRnd 6y ago
Flip-it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fullstop 6y ago
  https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102711303 https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271130... Might have been that brand. I remember seeing what it did and then figuring out how to get a hole in the 3.5" disk without cracking the plastic.
bentcorner 6y ago
I've seen it used - IIRC the problem is that the media isn't rated for the storage that you're now asking of it, so while it may survive being written/read a few times, it'd fail sooner.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  Can confirm. I used to drill holes with a... well, a drill. Totally worked. Capacity increased. Until one day your files were corrupted. And that day often came soon!
- monocasa 6y ago
  It might fail sooner, but you were banking on it essentially just being a binning distinction, that they didn't really do any testing either way and just stuck them in cases with or without the hole depending on what they thought they could sell at the time. Did I lose files on fake doublesided disks? Yes. Did I lose files on real doublesided disks? Also yes.

rzzzt 6y ago

I remember a tool called 2M on DOS, which allowed formatting 1.44M disks to non-standard capacities, up to ~1800k or so...? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)