How Amiga DiskSpare Saved 984k on a DD Floppy Disk
RobSmithDev RobSmithDev
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 Published On Oct 13, 2024

I'm currently working on an update to DiskFlashback and I wanted to add support for the Amiga DiskSpare.device disk format and so while investigating how it worked I thought I'd share my findings.
The crazy device, when setup in Workbench on the Amiga allowed you to format a double floppy disk with upto 984k capacity, or if you were lucky enough to have a high density drive, up to 1968k!

I did actually manage to hack DiskFlashback to store 1.066MB by going up-to 13 sectors per track by really speeding up the writing. It worked fine with the PC drive from Windows, but the Amiga was unable to read it, and woul never have been able to write back to it. Interesting though

You can still download it from Aminet here: https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/...

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📖 Chapters
(00:00) What is DiskSpare?
(01:19) How IBM PC Floppy Disks Stored Data
(02:42) Sectors and Headers
(04:02) How the Amiga Stored Data
(05:34) The Atari ST
(06:16) How DiskSpare.device worked
(08:25) Summary and Notes

🎧 Kevin MacLeod Music Used
• "Sergio's Magic Dustbin" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
• "Decisions" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
• "One Sly Move" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
• "Newer Wave" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
• "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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#amiga #diskspare #floppydisk

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