Hi all, I received a USB floppy drive in the mail today, which will help things along nicely. I just need to find somewhere locally that still sells floppies.
However, when I was formatting "My First Floppy" it reminded me of something I did to my QL back in the Sandy days. I was never satisfied that I usually got 205-209 sectors out of a microdrive cartridge. I wanted more. I often received cartridges with anything from 190 to 222 good sectors! DANG! I wanted the extra 7K or storage. I took off the cover, and ran the microdrives. I just wrote a little program to try to format forever, ignoring any errors. Then, I got the finest nail file my Mum had, and I gently reduced the diameter of the capstan rubber. I did it very evenly and smoothly, and stopped every .002"... Sure enough, on testing, each slight reduction got the tape to run just a little slower past the head, and capacity increased. And that's how I got microdrive cartridges that always formatted to 228-230 sectors. I found past about that, the number of format failed responses started to rise dramatically. Also, Mum would start to notice the black rubber all over her expensive emory boards and wonder about me... :) What OCD things have you done to your QL? Dave _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
