Floppy Disk Controller

[SteveD73]

Hi,

Im attempting to design a floppy disk drive controller for my project. The floppy disk controller needs to be able to read and write a FAT12 format disk.

My question is, does anyone know if an official specification exists for the standard PC floppy disk drive? Also, I understand that when Windows formats a disk it add's 'sector ID fields' and 'sector data fields', does anyone know where I can get the details for these fields?

Thanks for any help,

 

[edfair]

I would try a "google" search for the info. The original specs for the IBM PC were in a reference manual available for an extra charge.

The floppy doesn't understand FAT12. It understands that it is at track0, that the index has passed, that the diskette is HD and not write protected but that is about it.

Formatting adds track and sector information, room for the data, some identification in the boot sector, some information in the directory sector(s), and in the case of MSDOS, a linked list of available sectors in a database we call the file allocation table. Other operating systems do it differently.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.