Thanks for resurrecting my thread, but USB drives are useless for me. […]
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Thanks for resurrecting my thread, but USB drives are useless for me.
The main goal is use [urr=http://simonowen.com/samdisk/]Samdisk[/url] or CPCdiskXP (both use fdrawcmd.sys) to export disk images to 3.5 real disks.
Most of those images use:
a) Abnormal sector numbering. That was a "feature" of standard Spectrum and CPC disks (with sector numbering starting in 0xC0).
b) Non-standard size sectors. As a protection, some images included "big" sectors (up to 8192 bytes); in Dragon computers the "standard" sector size is 256 bytes/sector.
c) Missing tracks, missing sectors, non-consecutive sector numbering... those things to make FDC life interesting.
Most (if not all) USB floppy drives only admit two formats: 80 tracks*2 heads*9 sectors, with 512 bytes/sector and sector count starting at 0 (720Kb) or 80*2*18 with same sector parameters (1440Kb), so they're useless when dealing with non-PC formats.
There are a number of special solutions (Kryo Flux, Catweasel), but they're too expensive.