CrossDos - PC OS's Question

SnowDog · 03-31-2003, 05:27 PM

What versions of PC Operating Systems will read a 720K disk? I'm currently using XP and it's not working

Thanks!

carls · 03-31-2003, 05:32 PM

Strange - I've copied files from XP to my Miggy on a 720kB disk. Are you sure it's not just a bad disk?

jeffimix · 03-31-2003, 05:35 PM

Basically everything should be able to read one. If you use pre XP boot DOS and read it. If your using Xp make a DOS bootdisk and use the disk. But windows should handle it.

Lando · 03-31-2003, 06:29 PM

Win XP should read them but there's no support for formatting 720k disks in XP.

z36ra · 03-31-2003, 06:44 PM

hehe...
I was not able to fomat a floppy in 720K. I was able to find the selection on a Win98 box but when i tried to format a 1.44M in 720K I got an error. I covered the hole on the left with a piece of tape and was able to format it in 720k. Covering the hole got me nowhere with my A1200 but my 1000 and 500 will do it wether the hole is covered or not.
As far as reading the 720 floppy on XP I havent tried it but it should work after formatting. I presume that covering the hole will allow formatting to 720 in XP but, again, I have not tried it.

Also, I would presume that some of the newer floppy drives will not do 720k. A good candidate for my presumtion would be a floptical drive: A floppy + Optical. Compaq has been installing this in some of their machines for some time now. I cannot confirm this and have no desire to do so.

z36ra · 03-31-2003, 06:51 PM

I wasn't too clear on that.
When I say I covered the hole, I didn't mean the hole that you put the floppy in.

On a 1.44M floppy, there is a hole on both sides of the disk. one hole for WP (write protect) and the other for D ID (density idenetification). If you cover the hole on the left, not one with the plastic switch, it will tell the floppy drive that it is a low or double density drive.

SnowDog · 03-31-2003, 09:04 PM

Thanks for the help all! The tape did the trick... for some reason without the tape the A4000 would format the disk in such a way that it wasn't readable on my PC...

All is good now!

Thanks again

Vincent · 04-01-2003, 07:13 AM

There is nothing on most Amiga disk drives to check for a HDD, so it will automatically assume that it's a DD. The PC on the other hand, thinks it's a HDD (when the hole is not covered), and when it cannot read it as a HDD, it gives up thinking it's not formatted. That's why you need the tape - to fool the PC.

PC's are easily fooled aren't they? ;-) :-P

**Karlos** · 04-01-2003, 07:15 AM

Especially the heap of junk I'm using right now :-D

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