*BSD News Article 20926


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From: vax@sneezy.cc.utexas.edu (Vax)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: AMIFS? (was: Re: BSD UNIX)
Date: 13 Sep 1993 19:00:36 -0500
Organization: The University of Texas - Austin
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <2731j4$bpq@sneezy.cc.utexas.edu>
References: <SWILDNER.93Sep4145521@channelz.GUN.de> <1993Sep7.163857.19661@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <CD02sM.E3D@veda.is>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sneezy.cc.utexas.edu

In article <CD02sM.E3D@veda.is>, Adam David <adam@veda.is> wrote:
>terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>
>>Note that the MAC is similarly handicapped, but is even more variable than
>>the Amiga -- it may be possible to read Amiga disks on the MAC without a
>>great deal of trouble, but reading MAC disks on an Amiga or PC without
>>better hardware will be impossible (the MAC can write disks that other
>>machines can read, but doesn't by default).
>
>This is true for 800kB Mac disks, they are GCR encoded and have 5 different
>storage density zones. The Mac hardware deals with this by having the drive
>spin at variable speeds.

I have heard many stories of programs that read mac disks on other platforms
with more "standard" drives.  For example, I heard of an Amiga program
that shuts power on and off to the drive to "simulate" the different speeds
that the mac spins them at.
Also, I have heard of using some "latency timer" to simulate a funky kind
of interleave on a normal 3.5" drive that will read the different densities
of disks.

Both parties swear up and down that they've seen it work.


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