* Skybuck Flying:
Answer to last question:
http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/transfer/1541-dos/1541-dos.txt
It seems it involves modifications... which would ofcourse be way too risky
to do...
Maybe there is another way to read/write c64 disks on pc or vice versa
without hardware modifications ?
No, there is not; the controller is too stupid for that. There are
alternative controllers that aren't as braindead, but that's not 'without
hardware modifications'.
But what made you think this was the case here? Why would a C64 need to
read a PC floppy, or vice versa? The beauty of this trick is that it's not
required at all; a PC will 'see' a floppy with a whole lot of bad tracks
which it will just ignore, and the C64 will do just the same.
Otherwise I don't understand the initial excitement about his discovery...
It's a very clever trick, and elegant in a strange way. But I don't think
you'll be able to understand that.
Me trying to make sense of this all... does this sector layout solve
anything ?
It's not about sectors, dimwit, it's about tracks.
A C64 disk and a 360K PC disk are both 40 tracks, but that's where the
similarity ends. The whole reason this hack can exist is that a PC stores
volume information on track 0, including the file allocation table and
directory entries and what not, whereas the C64 does this on track 18.
What happens is that the PC will read it's info from track 0, and will see
that several tracks, including track 18, are 'bad', and it will just avoid
them, not realising that they really contain a C64 filesystem. The C64, on
the other hand, will start reading info from track 18, and will notice
that track 0 (which is just a 'normal' data track as far as a C64 is
concerned) is not available for storage, and will happily avoid reading it.
So there you have it: A disk which seems readable on both a C64 as well as
a PC. Of course, this will only work as long as both sides don't try to
access tracks 'of the other side', which would typically happen when you
try to copy a disk.
The comments clearly describes how it works, but I think you're just too
stoned to recognise that. Lay down those drugs.
(To alt.c64: where I write "C64 disk" and "C64", I obviously mean "1541
disk" and "1541" respectively, but I didn't want to complicate matters.
Skybuck won't be able to understand it as it is)