Subj : Re: Big nostalgia hits
To   : Spectre
From : Bob Worm
Date : Sat Nov 18 2023 21:32:25

  Re: Re: Big nostalgia hits
  By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Sat Nov 18 2023 10:11:00

Hi, Specre.

 > There's always the Disk ][.

I assume that's an Apple thing?

 > Goes through the chugga chugga chugga during
 > boot, as it ramps the head across 24 tracks to make sure its at 0 for boot
 > load. if the head is sitting anywhere closer than track 24, it just beats
 > the head against the mechanical stop cause it can't tell where the head is
 > positioned.

When I first revived my Acorn most of the software I could find was in disk images (I suppose disc in Acorn parlance) due to the jazzy way it handles file types. So to get basically anything working I had to code a raw disk writer in BASIC. Turns out while BASIC starts array indices, etc, at 1 (yuck), the underlying OS is zero based so when you make a system call to write track 40 it obediently tries to grind the head past the end of its track. Sounds very break-ey, won't be doing that again!

BobW

BobW
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