Hi Alexander,
Hello all. Is there a way to do a read track, i.e. reading whole tracks including the gaps and data/address marks, on a PC running Linux ?
A standard fd-controller does not support that. The best you could do is scan the layout of a track of the floppy using readID commands. You can partially reconstruct the layout if you have accurate timing information.
Has this changed over time? Only I thought Acorn's RISC PC switched to using an SMSC 37C665GT: http://www.smsc.com/main/datasheets/37c665gt.pdf High-Performance Multi-Mode Parallel Port Super I/O Floppy Disk Controllers which, at the time, was the kind of thing used in PCs. That had a Read a Track command, see page 54 of the PDF. Has it been dropped as PC hardware's moved on? I guess another alternative is to get an old floppy controller that supports the formats you're interested in and drive it directly. Cheers, Ralph.