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@tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
On Thursday 01 December 2005 00:19, Mike Pepe wrote:
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.
[root@testbox bin]# ./superformat /dev/fd0 Measuring drive 0's raw capacity Fatal error while measuring raw capacity
When I have such difficult disks I use fdformat with the -n option at first and then format it again without skipping the verification, so in your case: fdformat -n /dev/fd0u720 fdformat /dev/fd0u720
I can't remember where it was, I guess at the fdutils' homepage somwhere I read that sometimes it's necessary to skip the verification process at first when formatting difficult disks and the format again with verification, I don't know why it helps but it has helped for all difficult disks I've seen.
HTH Malte _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils@tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
Malte Gell wrote:
When I have such difficult disks I use fdformat with the -n option at first and then format it again without skipping the verification, so in your case: fdformat -n /dev/fd0u720 fdformat /dev/fd0u720
Well, what I'm trying to understand is what the purpose of the superformat utility is if the old fdformat utility works ok. Is superformat specifically for formatting "super capacity" disks? can it not format a low density disk at all?
I can't remember where it was, I guess at the fdutils' homepage somwhere I read that sometimes it's necessary to skip the verification process at first when formatting difficult disks and the format again with verification, I don't know why it helps but it has helped for all difficult disks I've seen.
Well, here's what I did and it seems to work: (I had to edit the keyword "zero-based" out of the mediaprm file)
[root@testbox ~]# /usr/local/bin/setfdprm /dev/fd0 COCO720 [root@testbox ~]# fdformat /dev/fd0 Double-sided, 80 tracks, 9 sec/track. Total capacity 720 kB. Formatting ... done Verifying ... done
Note that it says 9 sec/track but it really isn't- it does actually format the disk with 18 sec/track.
If that works, fine- I just want to know what superformat is for, if it's broken, or if it just doesn't do what I'm trying to do.
-Mike _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils@tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
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Malte Gell -
Mike Pepe