mcmiller@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Michael C Miller) (10/01/90)
Hi There, I have a need for some information and I figured that this might be a good place to ask for it. Disclaimer follows: I don't normally read this news group so I beg your forgiveness if this is a common question which has been already been beaten to death. Also, please respond as the time I can devote to News is limited so mail is best( although i will follow the group for a while to see if anyone posts a follow-up). What I need is this: A complete and detailed discription of the IBM ds/dd diskette format including: post index gap definition gap2 and gap3 definition any fat (12 bit or 16 bit) info I have proposed to build a stand-alone diskette copier/formatter for ibm 360k diskettes. The copying is no problem because of the controller chips ability to do complete track reads/writes. Formatting is the problem; all of the diskette utilities that I have used to do "diagnostic track reads" present only the data including and following the first byte of the first data sector! Am I to assume that there is no post index gap or sector 1 ID label ? That seems to go against all sensible formatting scemes. Most of the format conforms to the recommended ds/dd format as suggested in the application notes that I have but this one point is driving me crazy. Also, I need some (any) info about the boot sector routines. I understand what they do but I am not concerned with testing for system files. The format option will not be available for system/boot disks. I'll let the copy funtion handle this. How much of the bootroutines need to be kept? Can I just install a routine to print out the 'not a system disk' warning when ever the boot sector is accessed for a dos cold-boot? OK, thats about all for now. Thanks in advance for any help and please feel free to be verbose :-) thanks , michael -- ################################################################################ < sans => mcmiller@uokmax.UUCP or mcmiller@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu > < '..this one goes up to eleven. Its ONE louder.' >