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Re: Floppy disk formats

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In message <4e8531a6$0$27403$4d5ecec7@news.xsusenet.com>, 
ari1970ster@gmail.com said:

>Various utlities existed for the ST such as DC-Formatter and countless 
>others that allowed STs running older versions of TOS to format 
>compatible IBM / MS-DOS floppies.
>
>What you couldn't do on an ST was format a bootable IBM floppy (FORMAT 
>/S) since the boot loader was tied to the computer's OS and host 
>architecture. Otherwise, they were fully interchangable.

There is also an Atari program DISKMOD.TOS used with a 512-byte 
file BLOCK0.DAT which writes a PC-type boot sector to any 
80-track 9-sector disk without affecting any other data that may 
be on the disk. The first few bytes are 'ë4IBM  3.2' and near the 
end there is the string 'IBMBIO  COMIBMDOS  COM', both of which 
indicate that this is the IBM format.

As far as DOS is concerned, it's the first 3 bytes that matter. 
i.e. 'EB 34 90' in hex.

The bootable floppies on both Ataris and PCs had the same start 
bytes, followed by identifiers giving number of sides, tracks and 
sectors, but then a small executable program in the rest of the 
sector.

Regards, /Peter/

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Floppy disk formats Ken Springer <wordworks@greeleynet.com> - 2011-09-23 13:31 -0600
  Re: Floppy disk formats "Dave Wade" <dave.g4ugm@gmail.com> - 2011-09-23 23:34 +0100
    Re: Floppy disk formats Ken Springer <wordworks@greeleynet.com> - 2011-09-23 17:29 -0600
      Re: Floppy disk formats Winniethepooh@100acrewoods.org (GMAN) - 2011-09-25 20:01 +0000
  Re: Floppy disk formats Jammer <meva90@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-09-28 15:43 +0100
    Re: Floppy disk formats Ken Springer <wordworks@greeleynet.com> - 2011-09-28 09:21 -0600
      Re: Floppy disk formats Ari Feldman <ari1970ster@gmail.com> - 2011-09-28 22:08 -0400
        Re: Floppy disk formats Ken Springer <wordworks@greeleynet.com> - 2011-09-28 21:16 -0600
          Re: Floppy disk formats charlie <charles.copp@sympatico.ca> - 2011-09-29 16:32 -0700
          Re: Floppy disk formats Ari Feldman <ari1970ster@gmail.com> - 2011-09-29 23:04 -0400
            Re: Floppy disk formats xlator@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2011-10-02 10:05 -0500
              Re: Floppy disk formats Ari Feldman <ari1970ster@gmail.com> - 2011-10-03 21:54 -0400

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