PLUIMERS@rulcri.leidenuniv.NL ("Jeroen W. Pluimers") (06/11/91)
I have uploaded to SIMTEL20: pd1:<msdos.dskutl> FDFORM17.ZIP Floppy disk formatter - up to 1.8 mb per disk! FDFORMAT, a replacement for the DOS-Format program, has the following advantages: 1) Supporting 3-1/2"-1.44 MB drives with any BIOS-Versions in ATs and Clones. 2) Formatting and using of 720/820 kByte disks in AT 5-1/4"-1.2 MByte Drives using cheap double-density (DD) disks. 3) Increasing the capacity of your disks up to 300 kByte additional storage. 4) Supporting 3-1/2"-360 kByte format. This is useful, when you want to make copies of 5-1/4"-disks to 3-1/2"-disks using DISKCOPY 5) Enhance speed of your diskette I/O up to 100% with sector sliding. This is a method of physical ordering sectors in a way, that your drive is ready to read the next logical sector, when your head ad- vances one track. 6) Improved BOOT-Sector, which automatically boots from harddisk, if the diskette in drive A: is not a system disk. This allows you to leave the diskette in drive A;, when you reboot the system. Changes in Version 1.7: Added /W switch to do a format without erase. Added /Q and /U switches to work like DOS 5 FORMAT. Added Volume Serial Number. Uses DOS switch char to call COMMAND-SHELL and allows switch char to select options. A special 8088-Version of FDREAD was added, which is required on some XT systems. FDFORMAT, WIMAGE and READBOOT don't need Interrupt 58H any longer. Full extended Boot-Record as introduced in DOS 4 is now used. Fixed problems with some Diskette-Cache Programs. Lot's of bugs fixed. jeroen - - Jeroen W. Pluimers PLUIMERS%rulcri.leidenuniv.nl@rulway.LeidenUniv.nl
ericb@hplsla.HP.COM (Eric Backus) (06/15/91)
>pd1:<msdos.dskutl> >FDFORM17.ZIP Floppy disk formatter - up to 1.8 mb per disk! > >FDFORMAT, a replacement for the DOS-Format program, has the following >advantages: > >3) Increasing the capacity of your disks up to 300 kByte additional storage. >5) Enhance speed of your diskette I/O up to 100% with sector sliding. > This is a method of physical ordering sectors in a way, that your > drive is ready to read the next logical sector, when your head ad- > vances one track. These are quite impressive sounding. I have to wonder if there is a downside to increasing the storage capacity and/or I/O speed in this way? Okay, one downside is you have to have FDREAD resident in memory to read/write the larger capacity diskettes. Does doing this make it difficult/impossible to spare bad sectors? If so, does that matter? Does it make the diskette less reliable? I like the idea of 1.8 MB diskettes, but I am not willing to sacrifice data integrity, especially on my backups! -- Eric Backus ericb%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com (206) 335-2495
mig@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Meir I Green) (06/21/91)
In article <11230003@hplsla.HP.COM> ericb@hplsla.HP.COM (Eric Backus) writes: >>pd1:<msdos.dskutl> >>FDFORM17.ZIP Floppy disk formatter - up to 1.8 mb per disk! >Does doing this make it difficult/impossible to spare bad sectors? If so, >does that matter? Does it make the diskette less reliable? Use version 1.6, for now. I LOVE it and haven't found any reliability problems. But 1.8 MB is really much too small for real work and backing up a 200 MB hard disk. * * * * * * ====================== Meir Green * * * * * * ====================== (Internet) mig@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu * * * * * * ====================== meir@msb.com mig@asteroids.cs.columbia.edu * * * * * * ====================== (Amateur Radio) N2JPG
roberts@stsci.EDU (Jim Roberts) (06/21/91)
In article <11230003@hplsla.HP.COM> ericb@hplsla.HP.COM (Eric Backus) writes: >These are quite impressive sounding. I have to wonder if there is a >downside to increasing the storage capacity and/or I/O speed in this way? >Okay, one downside is you have to have FDREAD resident in memory to >read/write the larger capacity diskettes. I've been using version 1.6 for a few months. I use it mostly to turn 1.2MB floppies into 1.44s, so I can do diskcopies from the 1.44 drive, and to archive stuff. I've gotten a few hundred bulk 1.2 and 1.44s during that time, and format the 1.2s as 1.44s and the 1.44s as 1.72s I found that if the diskette formats successfully at the higher density, it is of good quality, but borderline if it fails. All the diskettes that failed at higher density formatted successfully at normal density, but I wouldn't trust them. So far, I haven't had any problem reading these diskettes on either of my PCs. But I go over each one with Mace Remedy, which runs pretty fast when you make use of the sector sliding. Normal capacity diskettes definitely read and write faster if you format them with fdformat's sector sliding. The real disadvantage it seems to me is that you cannot readily exchange disks with others who haven't joined the cult. You have to put a pod under their bed to make them into a pod-person like yourself. -- Jim Roberts roberts@stsci.edu scivax::roberts
rcotl@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Tim Liddelow [The Mad Monk]) (06/21/91)
ericb@hplsla.HP.COM (Eric Backus) writes: >These are quite impressive sounding. I have to wonder if there is a >downside to increasing the storage capacity and/or I/O speed in this way? >Okay, one downside is you have to have FDREAD resident in memory to >read/write the larger capacity diskettes. Considering it only occupies 128 or so bytes, that is not a downside. >Does doing this make it difficult/impossible to spare bad sectors? If so, >does that matter? Does it make the diskette less reliable? I have NEVER had any problems using FDREAD/FDFORMAT. If others have, I would like to hear it. -- ! Tim Liddelow rcotl@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au| <insert standard disclaimer> ! ! Computer Science & Com Eng | Jordan to Paxson...Paxson assists ! ! Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology | Pippen..JAM.."Scottie Piipppeenn!"! +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
rstanton@leland.Stanford.EDU (Richard Stanton) (06/22/91)
In article <1991Jun21.030228.14509@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> rcotl@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Tim Liddelow [The Mad Monk]) writes: >I have NEVER had any problems using FDREAD/FDFORMAT. If others have, I would >like to hear it. > >-- When I tried using MS SMARTDRV (spelling?), every time I tried to access my floppy drive, the first time I got the abort, retry, ignore message. If I typed "r", everything worked fine. This seemed to happen every time I inserted a new disk. With PC-CACHE, I have noticed no problems. Richard Stanton