I used a similar trick to get 1.68MB on a 1.44MB floppy. the extra 240KB really made a big difference in boot disks.
Re:Flipping your Disk (1981)
by WalterBright on Monday September 30, 2019 @03:39PM
(#21118950)
I just used a pair of scissors.
Re:Flipping your Disk (1981)
by zengargoyle on Monday September 30, 2019 @07:35PM
(#21120666)
I typed in and saved a disk editor program so I could use it to modify the directory information and skip one of the directory blocks. That's where I hid my secret stuff. And put an invisible control character in the name of the disk editor . My poor 8th grade teacher was none the wiser.
Re:Flipping your Disk (1981)
by bouncycastle on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:11PM
(#21121116)
Yep, I had one of these back in the C64 era. It was called a "notcher".
I guess this was one of the most essential tool backs in the days of our peer-to-peer file-sharing networks ;-)
The really cool trick on an Apple ][ was eeking out an extra 14% storage by modifying your drive to use 40 tracks instead of 35. Everything was designed to work with 40 track disks but for some reason the standard Apple ][ disk drive had a piece of metal physically preventing the disk arm from moving past track 35. You could bend / cut that out of the way and get 40 tracks. Even more if you hacked your software and trusted the disk media beyond track 40. But that was dodgy, up to track 40 was mostly safe. Except it broke a few copy protection schemes that would slam the disk arm all the way to the outside and expect that to be track 35.