[ sorry, I've been planning to write a reply for a while... ]

On Sun 21 Dec 1997, Udo Erdelhoff wrote:
> Hi,
> On Sat, Dec 20, 1997 at 05:28:02PM -0500, maximum entropy wrote:
> > >From: Julian Coleman <J.D.Coleman@newcastle.ac.uk>
> > >One oddity is that the floppy light stays on (from the 'scsicbus0 at ...'
> > >line on bootup) until floppy is inserted.  Also I notice :
> > >	fd0 at fdc0: 720KB 80 cyl, 2 head, 9 sec
> > >even though I have a 1.4M floppy.
> > That is normal.  The drives in the Atari don't support hardware
> > detection of the density
> just a quick idea: One of the dip switches (#7?) in a TT is used for
> this purpose. TOS is capable of reading the switch setting and displays
> the "high density" button in the format floppy dialog if the switch is
> set to on. NetBSD/atari could use the same strategy.

Problem is here that I couldn't find a way to read the switches. If you know
how to do that, please say so! 

> > The actual density selection used depends on the minor
> > device used, as documented in "man 4 floppy".
> This should also be replaced by a dynamic selection a la TOS. Try to read
> side 0, track 0, sector 0 in high density mode. If it fails, try it again
> in double density mode. If that doesn't work either, complain.

Yes, that's nicer indeed. You can make it even fancier and detect some other
formats too. My TT has only a 720Kb floppy drive however, so I depend on
others here ;-)

Leo.