Floppy disk formats

From	Ken Springer <wordworks@greeleynet.com>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.atari.st
Subject	Floppy disk formats
Date	2011-09-23 13:31 -0600
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<j5imj1$6dj$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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Maybe someone from Atariland knows or knows where the information is, 
since we could read IBM/PC floppies...

When the 3.5 floppy first appeared, in the PC world, if you had the 
right drive and the computer's BIOS supported it, you could format a 
floppy to 3 densities, 720k, 1.2mb, and 1.44mb.

You also had disks formatted by Windows95 and after, plus some disks 
that were IBM formatted.

I'm trying to find out the difference between the Windows format and the 
IBM format.

Why?  I need to upgrade the BIOS on an old Gateway computer, and the 
instructions specify the floppy used *must* be an IBM formatted floppy. 
  If you use a Windows formatted floppy, the update will fail.

Anyone know/remember the difference?

So far, asking the right questions in the right places in the PC world, 
and Googling and Ask.com, have not come up with the answer.  :-(


-- 
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 6.0.2
Thunderbird 6.0.2
LibreOffice 3.3.3

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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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