"FORNOMINAL FORMATTER" SKEWED +3 DISK FORMAT by Barry McConnell Guess where I'm going on holiday this year. No, Ireland actually. And guess where this month's first program comes from. Wrong, it's Ireland again. Spooky or what? I hope it'll be nice and sunny over there, though. From what I've heard it tends to be a bit damp, and I'd hate to have to spend the whole time stranded in a pub brooding over a pint of Murphys. Although actually ... Barry McConnell gets a pat on the head for this one (or should that be a Pat?). He's noticed that the standard +3 disk formatting routine is a bit crap, and he's come up with an alternative which'll speed things up by up to 60% (40% on average) just by formatting the disk in a different way. The way it works is rather technical, so skip the next paragraph if you're not bothered about the details (and go away altogether if you haven't got a +3). "Skewing" is what it's all about. (No - "skewing".) When the +3 normally formats a disk it numbers the sectors of each track in order from one to nine. While this might seem reasonable enough, as that's the order they're read in, in practice you tend to find that when the drive has finished reading one sector, the next has whizzed straight past and has to wait for another revolution of the disk for it to come round again. Hassleville, Arizona. The solution is to number the sectors differently while the disk is being formatted. How about one, eight, six, four, two, nine, seven, five, three? This means that each sector should slide neatly into place just when it's needed. Getting the program working is so easy you could probably do it with your eyes shut. Just type in the hex dump (using the Hex Loader) and save it. Then CLEAR 47999, LOAD "" CODE and there you have it. To start formatting just slot in the disk that needs doing and PRINT USR 48000. And off it goes. Make sure you've put the right disk in and everything, as there's no warning before it kicks off. The number returned by the PRINT statement will be 0 if everything went okay, and the appropriate DOS error number if there was a prob. Enjoy.