cc1@valhalla.cs.ucla.edu (Max Kislik) (04/06/89)
Is there a good formatter of double density disks on high density drives. Is there a RELIABLE formatter of DSDD disks on HD drives that produce more than the standard 360K? Max.
rlb@cs.odu.edu (Robert Lee Bailey) (04/07/89)
In article <22591@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> cc1@cs.ucla.edu (Max Kislik) writes: >Is there a good formatter of double density disks on high density >drives. Is there a RELIABLE formatter of DSDD disks on HD drives >that produce more than the standard 360K? > >Max. I use a program called CONFMT. It is a shareware program which allows you to format diskettes in a variety of different formats. (In the BACKGROUND!) It is a TSR program that can be called up from inside other programs. I have found that it will reliably format DSDD diskettes to 720K in a HD drive. The only caveat is that you must use DOS 3.3 or have a driver that supports 3.5" 720K. Also, some older BIOSes seem to NOT be able to recognize this format even WITH DOS 3.3 or a driver. My experience: it will either work reliably or it will not work at all. Try the program, format a 720K 5.25" and see if you can copy files to it. If you can, and you can read 'em & run 'em, then, you're in business! Bob Bailey
cs3b3aj@maccs.McMaster.CA (Stephen M. Dunn) (04/08/89)
In article <22591@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> cc1@cs.ucla.edu (Max Kislik) writes: >Is there a good formatter of double density disks on high density >drives. Is there a RELIABLE formatter of DSDD disks on HD drives >that produce more than the standard 360K? This all depends on what you mean by reliable. If you mean that you want your DSDD disks formatted on a 1.2 Mb drive to be readable by any other disk drive, be it 360K or 1.2 Mb, I'm afraid the answer is no. Some 360K drives (especially the older ones) have trouble reading such disks. You're almost guaranteed problems if you try reading such disks on the very early IBM full-height drives (the ones with the IBM logo molded into the cover). If, however, you only plan to read them on high-density drives, just about anything should format them. I use PCTools, because for some reason related (so I'm told) to the controller board in my computer, the DOS format command very rarely works. (Here's a topic for someone else to answer; it's a WD hard/floppy controller with a Miniscribe 3053, a 1.2 Mb and a 360 K hooked up to it. Also, my brother has the same trouble with a similar or identical controller, a 6053, and a 1.2 Mb drive. Any answers?) As for more than 360K on a disk, there was just a thread a couple of days ago on that topic, but alas I ignored it. Maybe if somebody saved a copy of it they could send it to you. Hope this helps. Regards -- ====================================================================== ! Stephen M. Dunn, cs3b3aj@maccs.McMaster.CA ! DISCLAIMER: ! ! This space left unintentionally blank - vi ! I'm only an undergrad ! ======================================================================