From: jhenders@jonh.wimsey.bc.ca (John Henders) Subject: Re: Fdformat questions. Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 21:06:38 GMT
kerry@gotss1.apana.org.au (Kerry Hoath) writes:
>>
>>And there is your problem: you should use setfdprm. If you do, you
>>do not need to change anything to the stock-Linus-supplied-kernel. I
>>happily use 820kB floppies for some unimportant archiving.
>>
>How do you format the 820k disks then? Do you do that under dos?
>I'd like to use single-stepped 800k 5.25 inch disks but can not format/read
>them under linux.
Formatting is not the problem, making a filesystem on the disk
afterwards is, however.
From the man page for setfdprm.
Without any options, setfdprm loads the device (usually
/dev/fd0 or /dev/fd1) with a new parameter set with the
name entry found in /etc/fdprm (usually named 360/360,
etc.). These parameters stay in effect until the media is
changed.
However, after formatting, doing mkfs /dev/fd1 <number of blocks>
with number of blocks set to the previously formatted non-standard
format just gives me errors and a whole bunch of floppy controller
resets printed to the console.
Fdformat, I discovered by accident, will also happily attempt to
format a low density 3.5 floppy to 14400. I don't know if it actually
writes the format to the floppy (doesn't the lack of a HD hoole stop the
drive mechanism from actually writing to the floppy, like the write
protect tab?), but it certainly will not take a filesystem afterwards.
I have the kernel patches, but they are for 99pl10, which I haven't
installed, so when I do, I'll report whether this fixes the problem, if
there's any interest.
-- John Henders GO/MU/E d* -p+ c+++ l++ t- m--- s/++ g+ w+++ -x+