[rescue] imaging old Mac double density floppy disks

[Phil Stracchino]

kevin wrote:
> Lately, i've been trying to image a bunch of Macintosh formatted 
> DD (double density) floppy disks using my x86 linux box.  It 
> seems to work like a charm for the HD floppies but none of the DD 
> floppies work.
> 
> Someone told me that the old Macintosh DD floppy drives (not the 
> SuperDrives of days past) were "special" and that it was not 
> possible to read older Mac formatted DD floppies using a PC 
> floppy drive.  Anyone know if there is any validity to this?  I 
> thought that none of that would be relevant if i was using dd 
> (i'm not mounting the disks, just trying to image them).

The vanished 1.6MB "Superdrives" used an Apple-specific format that used
higher sector counts on the longer outer tracks.  A standard PC 1.4MB
diskette drive cannot read this format.  AFAIK, only a Superdrive can
read them.



-- 
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-886-3518
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater