Hi Alan.
>> type of floppy controller in the system (I don't know which). If
>> you boot from a floppy on a <200 MHz system it boots fine, an a
>> >300 MHz system it can take 5-10 min to read the image off of
>> the floppy before it starts to compress it.
> I see the problem on specific floppy controllers - notably the
> AHA1542 scsi controller has the problem. Its because we format
> all our floppies with an interleave of 1 while DOS tends to use
> 3 I believe
>From experience, DOS varies in the interleave it uses depending on the
type of drive, the capacity of the disk, and whether it's a generic or
OEM release.
I've met all of the following:
1. Interleave 4 with Compaq OEM releases, and with 5.25" 1200k
drives formatting 720k floppies.
2. Interleave 3 with 5.25" 1200k drives formatting 360k or 1200k
floppies, and with 1440k 3.5" drives formatting 1440k floppies.
3. Interleave 2 with 5.25" 720k or 1200k drives formatting 720k
(80 track 9 sector) floppies, and with 3.5" drives formatting
720k floppies.
4. Interleave 1 with 2880k 3.5" drives formatting 1440k or 2880k
floppies.
Note especially the last one - it means that 1440k floppies formatted
on a 2880k drive are considerably slower to read in a 1440k drive than
the same disk formatted in a 1440k drive.
However, with that exception, Dos doesn't use an interleave of 1, as
you state.
Best wishes from Riley.
* Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
* All rights and wrongs reserved.
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