#1.44mg floptical help?
8 messages in this thread
Just got an Insite 20-meg floptical drive and it installed flawlessly in
my A2000HD. Am backing up the hard drive as I write this. However, would
like advice from anyone who's succeeded in using CrossDOS to
format/read/write 1.44 meg MS-DOS floppies in the floptical, as the manual
says is possible. I tried writing a mountlist, basing it on other CrossDOS
mountlists and the rather obscure descriptions in the CrossDOS and Insite
manuals, but it failed. If you've got this setup working, please post your
mountlist here.
The floppy need to be low level formatted.I am using that setup and no
problem. Bye Michel Beausejour
Michel: I know that the 1.44m floppy must be low-level formatted in the
Insite drive, but I can't get that far, because the mountlist file I wrote
is somehow not right. I need to get a good mountlist file before I can
proceed. I'm trying to mount the device under CrossDOS.
Ron,
is this a SCSI drive. If so, where did you get it and how much. I am trying
to find out if I can use cross dos on the Amiga for a 20mg IBM format and
find a product on a Macintosh to be able to acces it on that end. thanks,
Brian
It's the DMI (Digital Micronics) 20-meg 3.5" floptical drive. Uses
specially prepared diskettes. Look like regular 3.5 inchers but won't work
in standard drives. For 1.44m/720K MS-DOS disks the drive uses regular
DSHD diskettes. The floptical handles 20 megs as a removeable SCSI device.
You use your hard drive controller formatting program to set up the discs
(I've got an A2091; GVP, Supra and others will work, too). Then it
reads/writes just like a regular 20-meg hard drive, except you can
exchange disks. I've just managed to get it to read 1.44-meg MS-DOS disks
via CrossDOS; mounting has been flakey so far, but I'm probably doing
something wrong. DMI's manual says the company also sells a $49 Macintosh
utility that, when run on AMAX II, will let you read/write 20-meg and 1.44
meg disks in Mac format, too. I haven't ordered that yet. I would think
that the Mac's built-in MS-DOS disk read utility could directly handle a
1.44 meg MS-DOS. I paid $389 for the internal 3.5" version of the drive
with SCSI cable and one 20-meg diskette from Safe Harbor mail order. It's
faster than a floppy but slower than a typical hard drive. Great for
backups! The 20-meg disks go for about 20 bucks, and price cuts are
expected as production ramps up.
Ron,
Will the DMI floptical read AmigaDos floppies (either 880k or 1.56k)?
…Steve
On AutoPilot! (at last)
Nope, the DMI floptical doesn't read standard AmigaDOS disks. Apparently
there's no technical reason why it couldn't. Only problem is that DMI
caters mostly to the IBM/Mac markets and hasn't gotten around to doing a
setup routine. If it did that, it would be the perfect drive; even as it
is, the floptical is pretty nice.
Well, I think I can come up with one…. I believe that Amiga disk tracks
can start ANYWHERE on the disk. This would confuse a drive that expects a
disk track to start at a SPECIFIC location on the disk — like right after
the index pulse is sensed….
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
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