Trouble with very odd 3.5" format

[admin]

I experimented with this a bit.  My 3.5" drive always has this issue, no matter what I do for seeking.  I get no fewer than 80,000 bit cells of time (nearly a full revolution) of no data coming from the drive if you don't wait on the index pulse.  I am guessing that this must be something to do with how the reading works with the 3.5" drive mechanisms.  I never noticed this before because this option is really only to be used with 5.25" disks, however, I do use with other types of devices (like tape drives).  The Disk Type is sort of an "auto filler" for the tracks and that's it.

I can pop up a message stating that the drive is not spooling data if the very first bitcell ends up being a strong bit (which is what we call this in the protection scheme world).

I would like to re-write the entire copier application in C++ (it's written in Visual Basic 6 right now).  If someone were to make a Visual Studio/C++ template that had a basic interface (like a few buttons and such), I could figure it out from there and write a new copier.  I am just not familiar with Visual Studio enough to create something from scratch.  With a new copier I would make things like selecting the drive type would invoke various settings, and at that point analyzers for different disk formats would be easy to add in as plug-ins.