Fdutils November 2005

fdutils@fdutils.linux.lu

3 participants
2 discussions

superformat doesn't work for me
by Mike Pepe 01 Dec '05

01 Dec '05

Hi all, Hope someone can point me in the right direction. I've been banging at this thing for months off-and-on and I can't get it to work. System is running Fedora Core 4, kernel is 2.6.14-1.1644_FC4smp. This is with fdutils 5.5 I'm trying to format old 8 bit OS9 disks in my 1.44 meg /dev/fd0 drive. The format is 720k, 80 tracks, 18 sectors, 256 bytes per sector, 2 sides. I'm using 720k media. I can set the parameters fine: [root@testbox bin]# setfdprm /dev/fd0 DS DD sect=18 cyl=80 ssize=256 but superformat has never worked for me, no matter what I do I get output like this: [root@testbox bin]# ./superformat /dev/fd0 Measuring drive 0's raw capacity Fatal error while measuring raw capacity 0: 40 1: 01 2: 00 3: 00 4: 00 5: 01 6: 08 if I use regular old fdformat, it works, but it reports the wrong number of sectors- so maybe it really doesn't work. Note that I can format the disks in the actual system and transfer images back and forth just fine. I just can't format them in linux. thanks -Mike _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils(a)tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils

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USB Floppy Formatting. (fwd)
by David C Niemi 27 Nov '05

27 Nov '05

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | David C Niemi (Reston, VA, USA) niemi at tuxers dot net | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:45:57 +1100 From: John Floyd <jfloyd(a)bigpond.net.au> To: fdutils-owner(a)tux.org Subject: USB Floppy Formatting. Hello, Is this something that you would like to include in fdutils? I have been looking for quite a while for a solution to this, and just recently found this reference http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/format_usbfdd_e.html I tried it on a usb floppy that I have access to and it only appeared to format the first track. I have modified the code to specifically format each track and side. It appears to work but some specific testing still needs to confirm this. USB formatting seems to operate under the UFI spec and each drive has an internal list of the floppy formats that it will accept (limiting I realise). So it will not work genetically like superformat does. This appears to be a hardware/firmware implementation limit. Given the amount of trouble that I have had getting this info - I have been trying to decide on the best way to advertise this - it seems that fdutils is the best IMO. Let me know please. John. _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils(a)tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils

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Fdutils November 2005