Re: Need an 8280 formatted 8" disk (progress!)

Hey Rob, all

I've also had a formatting problem with my 8280, but haven't tried it 
out again in a decade.  I recall, like you, going on an intense hunt for 
the Correct floppy disks.  I ended up with a box of Verbatum 2s/2d 
soft-sectored "FD2" disks from 1990 (!!)

The 2S/2D disk I have has a single round hole near the center that goes 
clear though the disk, but no second hole (unless you count the fact 
that the same hole is on both sides of the disk).

The disk also has a write-protect tab on the bottom-right of the disk, 
near where the read/write exposure strip is.  Came right out of the damn 
box that way.  Could the write-protect logic on 8" disks be opposite to 
5.25"? That is, write is enabled when the tab is covered, and disabled 
when exposed?

- Bo

P.S. I never thought about issueing block read/write commands to an 
unformatted floppy, since I just assumed that they would error out, but 
that sounds like a fun thing to try, so thanks for that.


On 2/13/2017 3:49 PM, Rob Clarke wrote:
> Some progress has been made.  Thanks to Ethan's suggestion of trying
> B-R and B-W to check the stepper operation I realised that track 0,
> sectors 1-26 are readable and writable successfully, which shows that
> all the read/write circuitry is good, as is at least side of my media.
> It also shows that my attempts to format the disks at least started
> successfully.


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