formatted floppies question

[orange]

It could be that FDD hasn't got RDY signal. CrossDOS seems to require it like NDOS games and XCOPY..

[Thomas]

My machine (tried) to format it as a pc disk using crossdos(apparently).

Well, it did what you told it to do. If you format the disk in drive PC0, it will become a PC disk and if you format the disk in drive DF0, it will become an Amiga disk. Funny thing is that both logical drives PC0 and DF0 point to the same physical drive.

When I bought a box of floppies at Staples they turned out to be all preformatted as pc disks and there was apparently no place to buy the old fashioned non-formatted DD disks.

As long as I can think back all new floppies were pre-formatted as PC disks. DD with 720K and HD with 1440K. As told above, it's easy to format them as Amiga disks, just use DF0 and not PC0.

both machines have crossdos, as far as I can tell and only one can read pc disks. I would like to figure out how to make both of them do the same thing. I am limited by the fact that I haven't got a cross dos install in this pile of floppies scattered around the room, so set up is hard

I doubt that you ever had a CrossDOS install disk unless you bought one for a lot of money. CrossDOS usually came with Workench and its files are spread over several disks (Workbench, Storage and Extras IIRC).

Basically you need three files:

1. Devs/DosDrivers PC0

This is a text file telling AmigaDOS which drivers to use with unit. First click its icon once and choose Icon/Information from the menu. Check if tooltypes exist. If so, write them down and then delete them. Now open the file in your favourite text editor. Check that the following lines are present:

Fileystem = L:CrossDOSFilesystem
Device = mfm.device
Unit = 0
Activate = 1 or Mount = 1

If one of them was among the tooltypes add them here. Save changes and exit the editor.

Now check that CrossDOSFileSystem is in L: and mfm.device is in Devs:.

In order to avoid confusion you should move PC0 from Devs/DosDrivers to Storage/DosDrivers and reboot. If you need PC0, you can temporarily activate it by a double click.

If it does not work, run SnoopDOS before you double click PC0.

As I told earlier, please post the ouput of Assign and Info with PC0 mounted and a floppy disk in the drive.

Edit: I started with 1. so I should continue with 2. and 3. Please assume that L:CrossDosFileSystem is 2. and Devs:mfm.device is 3. :-)

Bye,
Thomas

[orange]

Interestingly, there was a program for reading PC diskettes that allowed you to access them BOTH as DF0: AND MD0: (IIRC)

it was great and IMHO better than crossdos especially because it worked fine with KS1.3.
think its name is messydos

[Vincent]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already (I don't remember reading it).

If they are HDs then you'll need to put a bit of sellotape over the small hole on the opposite side of the label of the write protection hole.

The PCs should then be able to read it as a DD disk instead of a HD.  The Amiga can usually read them because they don't have the HD sensor pin thingy.  PCs do.

I know it's a simple thing, but they can easily be forgotten :-)

[InTheSand]

orange wrote:
Interestingly, there was a program for reading PC diskettes that allowed you to access them BOTH as DF0: AND MD0: (IIRC)

it was great and IMHO better than crossdos especially because it worked fine with KS1.3.
think its name is messydos

I vaguely remember MessyDOS, but XFS does a better job than either that or CrossDOS, plus it works on KS1.3, 2.x and 3.x and allows long filenames on FAT-formatted disks.

 - Ali