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SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 06:53:43 JST SuperDicq

Does anyone on fedi know how to format a floppy disk for Amiga on GNU/Linux?

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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 06:57:29 JST SuperDicq
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  We have an Amiga 500 at the hackerspace and I wanna make disks for it.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:01:44 JST SuperDicq
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  What I know so far is that older versions of GNU Parted have an Amiga formatting option.
  
  Is this option for floppy diskettes or just Amiga hard drives?
  
  Is there other software out there that can do this?
  
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:28:02 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq Normal PC floppy controllers can't write Amiga 800KB disks, you can buy or make a greaseweazle USB floppy controller for that. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle
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    GitHub - keirf/greaseweazle: Tools for accessing a floppy drive at the raw flux level
    
    Tools for accessing a floppy drive at the raw flux level - GitHub - keirf/greaseweazle: Tools for accessing a floppy drive at the raw flux level
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:28:02 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social Normal PC floppy controllers can't write Amiga 800KB disksI've read this somewhere before, but I don't understand why. I have not found a logical reason as to why this isn't possible.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:29:55 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social When I read people say "You can't format an Amiga on PC" I kinda ignored it as I assumed they were talking about Windows specifically or something.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:35:52 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social Very interesting that this limitation is on a hardware level then. I guess I will use one of those microcontroller kits then.
  
  Kinda makes me wonder why IBM PC compatible floppies were never 800 kb if the potential was there? Is this is a durability thing?
  
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:35:53 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq Normal PC floppy controllers make certain assumptions about the on disk format that the Amiga didn't have to follow because it used custom hardware. So to squeeze more bytes out of a floppy disk, they placed sectors closer together than a standard IBM PC compatible floppy disk controller could read or write.
  
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:43:36 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq I guess that's just what they went with, just the same as their 5 1/4" format, just double the tracks. As an interesting aside, Microsoft invented an on-disk format that allowed for 1680KB on 1,44MB disks to distribute their software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_Media_Format
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    Distribution Media Format
    
    Distribution Media Format (DMF) is a format for floppy disks that Microsoft used to distribute software. It allowed the disk to contain 1680 KiB of data on a 31⁄2-inch disk, instead of the standard 1440 KiB. As a side effect, utilities had to specially support the format in order to read and write the disks, which made copying of products distributed on this medium more difficult. An Apple Macintosh computer running Disk Copy 6.3.3 on the Mac OS 7.6 or later operating system can copy and make DMF disks. The first Microsoft software product that uses DMF for distribution were the "c" revisions of Office 4.x. It also was the first software product to use CAB files, then called "Diamond". Comparison of DMF and standard 1440 KiB 31⁄2-inch diskettes: DMF in the form of a 1680 KiB Virtual Floppy Disk (VFD) image and IBM Extended Density Format (XDF) images are supported by Windows Virtual PC. See also 2M, a program that allows the formatting...
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:43:36 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social One thing that makes me wonder is that the Wikipedia page for ADF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Disk_File) does say "As they are plain disk images, they can be handled by the Unix tool dd.".
  
  Is contains no source, is this false information?
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    Amiga Disk File
    
    Amiga Disk File (ADF) is a file format used by Amiga computers and emulators to store images of floppy disks. It has been around almost as long as the Amiga itself, although it was not initially called by any particular name. Before it was known as ADF, it was used in commercial game production, backup and disk virtualization. ADF is a track-by-track dump of the disk data as read by the Amiga operating system, and so the "format" is really fixed-width AmigaDOS data tracks appended one after another and held in a file. This file would, typically, be formatted, like the disk, in Amiga Old File System (OFS). ADF Most ADF files are plain images of the Amiga-formatted tracks held on cylinder 0 to 79 of a standard 3.5-inch (89 mm) double-density floppy disk, also called an 880 KiB disk in Amiga terms. The size of an ADF will vary depending on how many tracks have been imaged, but in practice it is unusual to find ADF files that are not 901,120 bytes in size (80 cylinders × 2 heads × 11 sectors × 512 bytes/sector). Most Amiga programs were distributed on double-density floppy disks. There are also 3.5-inch high-density floppy...
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:51:24 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq Technically true on a logical level, but this assumes that you can actually write the on disk format which a normal PC floppy controller can't do. So misleading, I guess? The Amiga, on the other hand, can read normal 720KB PC formatted disks, but I don't think it can boot from them.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:51:24 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social Yes, indeed, Amiga Workbench version 3 and above have msdos floppy support, this support is obviously only loaded once you have booted the Workbench disk so it can't boot a msdos formatted floppy directly.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:54:38 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social Yeah so I guess the only thing a PC floppy controller is useful for is file transfer using msdos floppies then, but not for making boot disks.
  
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:54:39 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq I meant that it would have been possible to format an Amiga disk with the Amiga's logical format but the PCs physical sector layout. But I guess Kickstart doesn't support booting from that.
  
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:57:28 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq Exactly. The Greaseweazle is an inexpensive and really interesting device for working with any kind of floppy format, I think it's well worth getting. Or emulate the floppy drive with a Gotek floppy emulator, another popular choice.
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 07:57:28 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social I've heard about the Gotek but emulating a floppy drive and not using the physical media feels like cheating to me. Why not run the whole Amiga in an emulator then?
  
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  SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 08:00:22 JST SuperDicq
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  - Ingo Paschke
  @ipaschke@mastodon.social Yeah well being at a hackerspace we got large stacks of 3.5" disks, about 75% of them working.
  
  In conversation about a year ago permalink
  
  Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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  Ingo Paschke (ipaschke@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Dec-2023 08:00:23 JST Ingo Paschke
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  @SuperDicq I think it's a valid choice of using modern mass storage because for some people, that doesn't take away too much from the original experience. And double density 3,5" disks in working order are getting pretty hard to find these days.
  
  In conversation about a year ago permalink

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