Can't understand...

[Zac67]

srg86 wrote:
On the Amiga, when you do this, you get sent back the raw undecoded data from the disk, you then must decode it in software. This does give the cpu a little more burden (that isn't very amiga like but that's the way it is)

Actually most of this decoding used to be done by Blitter - without much CPU load AND flexible software decoding - THIS really was the Amiga way!  :lol:

[Zac67]

Paula does the analog <-> digital bits, very basic channel en/decoding stuff. The raw data is transferred to a CHIP-RAM buffer where the MFM <-> data stuff is done by Blitter and 68k (Blitter probably doing the sync searching and bit shifting stuff, 68k doing the header/data separation).

If you use 1541 disks in a 5.25" drive (GCR encoding instead of MFM) the Blitter's most certainly no use, so the CPU has to work a bit more.

btw: A CIA does the I/O control of the FDDs (head stepping/selection, r/w switching etc.) - so there's quite a bit of team work involved. ;-)

Edit: Completely forgot about Gary: HE does the write protection, motor on/off controls - even more teaming up.