Guillaume Cottenceau posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 14:25:34 +0200:
> John Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> > Not so. I periodically tested the cooker tree for the ability to >> > create a good install and a running Mandrake. >> >> Try this script; it creates a 1680k formatted floppy. > > If we want to go with larger floppies with 1.44 MBytes drives, we > need serious testing. I'm afraid this brings lots of hardware > problems (and floppies already have much hardware problems). > > Not talking about frying the floppy drive, a-la LG? :) I'm not sure how large one can go w/o trouble, but Microsoft even used specially formatted extra high capacity floppies for some of its stuff back ~ MSDOS 6.x, and probably with the '95 available by special order on floppy. I think they were at least 1680k, tho.. Also, I used to have a custom formatter I got off of one of those old shareware/freeware utility CDs, that allowed up to (theoretically) 1.9M.. IIRC. The readme.txt that came with it said try it on your drive until you get the max possible. It said most wouldn't do as high as the formatter could go, but could do far better than the 1.44 default. It also said if you heard extra clicking you were pushing it to hard, abort, and back off a bit, or risk damaging the drive. I believe 1680k should be about the common top, however. Pushing it, but most drives should do it without damage. I'm sure a hardware guru from that era should know more about it than that, and I'd definitely recommend confirming it either with one of them or a current drive manufacturer, but I BELIEVE 1680k should be reasonably doable without harm. One might also be able to get some info from someone either still having or remembering the details of the old MS format.. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
