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  • 80-track 5.25" disk images

    From fadden@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 30 15:41:36 2023
    I'm looking for some 80-track 5.25" disk images, in .woz or .app (Trackstar) format, to test against.

    I know that 80-track DOS disks were a thing on the Basis 108 clone. I learned about those from https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/645#issuecomment-1489205354 , which helped me figure out how the VTOC worked. But I don't have any 80-track
    WOZ/APP images that were created on original hardware. I checked https://www.diskman.com/presents/trackstar/ but nothing jumped out at me.

    For that matter, I can't remember seeing 40-track images in which the last 5 tracks were actually used.

    Anybody know where to find a few?

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  • From qkumba@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 31 09:37:10 2023
    For that matter, I can't remember seeing 40-track images in which the last 5 tracks were actually used.

    There's a Spanish word-processor named Royal something, that used data from track 35 for its copy-protection. 4am might have a .woz of it. Hacker Challenge used data from track 35 or 36, and I think there's a woz of that available.
    I know that there's at least one other title using track 35, but the name is gone completely. 4am might know of one.

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to fadden on Mon Jul 31 18:47:47 2023
    fadden <[email protected]> wrote:
    For that matter, I can't remember seeing 40-track images in which the last
    5 tracks were actually used.

    I pretty regularly formatted disks on my DuoDisk to 38 tracks. Any more
    than that was unreliable as the stepper ran out of range. A special disk-formatting program that put down the extra tracks made these trivial to create and use under ProDOS. I don't know of an equivalent for DOS 3.3, but
    as I only used DOS 3.3 when I had to, I didn't care.

    It's doubtful that any commercial software would've shipped on disks with
    more than 35 tracks, except maybe as part of a copy-protection scheme.

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Mon Jul 31 12:22:50 2023
    On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 11:47:50 AM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:
    I pretty regularly formatted disks on my DuoDisk to 38 tracks. Any more
    than that was unreliable as the stepper ran out of range.

    I've found a few instances of programs that claimed to format for 40 tracks, e.g.:
    - https://www.apple.asimov.net/images/disk_utils/Certifix%20%28Quorum%20International%2C%20Unlimited%20-%201982%29.dsk
    - https://www.apple.asimov.net/images/disk_utils/cracking/The%20Pirates%20Toolkit%20%28Micro%20Mafia-1985%29.dsk
    - https://www.apple.asimov.net/images/masters/3rd_party_dos/david_dos.dsk

    I think at one point I found a program that tried to create an 80-track disk, but I've lost track of it.

    Trackstar images can be a little strange: if the disk has 35 tracks, the image file can have a copy of track 34 in the areas where tracks 35-39 live (see: DOS33MAS.APP). So if the sectors are readable, but the address fields have the wrong track number,
    you can ignore those tracks. This is the sort of thing that makes me not want to make assumptions about what disk images actually look like.

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