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William Luitje
13 March 1995
This is a collection of 8 small utilities which will help you use
your floppy disks more effectively. Since you probably worry
more about how to get better speed and storage out of your hard
disk, this may not be a matter of pressing concern to you.
However, floppies are going to be used for quite a while and by
spending a few minutes with these utilities you can make things
go a little bit faster each time you use a floppy. Programs are
provided to
■ set the mechanical parameters of operation for your floppies
■ test for the maximum reliable step rate of a floppy drive
■ test a drive or disk for read errors
■ measure the seek performance of a floppy system
■ determine the optimal skewing parameters for formatting disks
■ test the rotational speed of a drive for accuracy
■ show the formatting parameters for a floppy disk
■ aid in the use of a head cleaning disk
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPPARM ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Floppies have been around a long time and have been improved
since they first came out, not only in capacity but also in their
mechanical speed and accuracy. Unfortunately, system software
can't tell what the best speed to drive a floppy is and must be
compatible with old drives and so uses conservatively slow
parameters. When accessing a floppy, the BIOS uses a table
called the Diskette Parameter Table for these parameters.
Interrupt vector 1E contains the address of this table. Since it
is usually set up in RAM by DOS, it is easy to modify it for
modern, fast drives. FLOPPARM will do this for you conveniently;
simply run it with one of the three arguments SLOW, MEDIUM, or
FAST. The parameters which are affected are:
■ step rate and head unload time, which are parameters of the
disk controller chip.
■ head settle time, which is the amount of time the BIOS takes
after stepping from one track to another to wait for the head
mechanism to stop vibrating.
■ motor startup time, which is the amount of time taken by the
BIOS to allow the spindle motor speed to stabilize after it
first starts up.
SLOW is provided for compatibility with really old drives; MEDIUM
is somewhat faster than DOS 5; and FAST is pedal to metal! When
run, FLOPPARM displays the parameters used. If run with no or an
illegal argument, FLOPPARM will display a usage hint and the
current values of the parameters.
FLOPPARM also allows you to specify your own parameters by using
the CUSTOM argument followed by an equals sign and the four
parameters (step rate, head unload time, head settle time and
motor startup time) separated by commas (no spaces allowed). For
example a command equivalent to FLOPPARM MEDIUM would be
flopparm custom=13,15,1,2
Legal values for step rate and head unload time are from 1 to 15.
Legal values for head settle time (in milliseconds) and motor
startup time (in 1/8s of a second) are from 1 to 255.
How do you decide what custom values to use? Obviously, to speed
up operation, increase step rate and decrease head unload time,
head settle time and motor startup time. Since motor startup
time is given in eighths of a second and the other parameters are
given in milliseconds, it seems like a good place to look for a
speed increase. I've had no problems setting it to one and that
produces a noticeable reduction in the time you have to wait for
the floppy when the motor is off.
I've provided two utilities to help in testing your settings for
the rest of the parameters, TESTSTEP and FLOPTEST. These will be
described in subsequent sections. In any case, once you decide
which parameters to use, just put a line invoking FLOPPARM in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and enjoy a modest increase in floppy
speed.
NOTES: FLOPPARM is not a TSR and does not take up any DOS memory;
it simply modifies a table in RAM which is already created by
DOS. Also, there is only one table to control the operation of
all of the floppy drives in your system; make sure that your
slowest drive can handle the parameters you set.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ TESTSTEP ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Use TESTSTEP to find the fastest step rate which can be used with
a particular floppy drive. It starts with the highest possible
step rate, 15, and then does a large number of seeks on the
selected drive to see if that rate is too fast. If so, then the
step rate is lowered and the test retried until all of the seeks
can be done without error.
To run this test you must use a floppy which has been formatted
with no errors at the standard size for that drive. For example,
if you are testing a 5¼" High Density drive you must use a 1.2
Meg disk, not a 360K disk. Similarly, you shouldn't use a 720K
disk in a 3½" High Density drive or vice versa.
This test appears to be very stringent; no drive which I have
tested has passed it with a step rate of 15. However, during
normal use most floppies seem to work at that rate, probably
because the seeks are not as severe. You can be sure that if it
passes this test it will work reliably during normal use.
Note that this program by doesn't test the head unload and head
settle times at all. You can test these indirectly with the
FLOPTEST utility described in the next section.
TESTSTEP takes one argument, the drive letter. Only A and B are
supported at this time. Here is an example command and result.
teststep b
Test Maximum Floppy Step Rate, Ver 1.0 by luitje@m-net.arbornet.org
Drive B: has 80 tracks; current Step Rate is 13
Testing Step Rate = 15: failed
Testing Step Rate = 14: failed
Testing Step Rate = 13: passed
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPTEST ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
FLOPTEST provides a practical test of whether you have set your
floppy drive parameters too fast. It will simply seek to every
track of the disk, read a sector and report any errors it finds.
The seek pattern is called a "butterfly test" since it reads the
first track, then the last track, then the second track, then the
next to last track, etc. This will really give the drive a
workout!
This test requires a formatted floppy which has no bad sectors.
(FLOPTEST can't tell if an error is due to the drive not working
properly or due to a bad disk). It is a read only test so it
shouldn't change any data on the disk. There are two parameters:
one is the drive letter and the second is the number of passes to
run. If you get any errors and your floppy is ok then you should
back off one or more of the floppy drive parameters and test
again. Here is an example
floptest a 20
If you are fortunate enough to have more than 2 disk drives (this
applies both to FLOPTEST and to the other utilities in this
package, except where noted), you can refer to the third drive as
c and the fourth drive as d, even if you have a hard drive that
goes by either of those names. I know this is confusing but this
test operates at the BIOS level and has no idea what letter DOS
has assigned to your third and fourth floppies. I had a choice
of confusing people who had more than 2 floppy drives or
confusing everybody by making you specify the drive with a number
rather than a letter. That's life.
You can also use FLOPTEST to see if a floppy disk has any bad
sectors. If you run it with only the drive letter specified,
then it will attempt to read every sector (linearly, starting
with track 0) and report any failures. Since FLOPTEST makes only
one attempt to read each sector, it will warn you if a sector is
getting weak. I use this feature a lot before putting any new
information on an old disk. If the disk has errors, I either
reformat it or throw it away.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ SEEKBNCH ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Once you have your parameters set as you like them you can use
SEEKBNCH to measure how fast your drive will seek with the
controller set to the current step rate parameter. SEEKBNCH
performs three benchmarks:
■ track to track seek time
■ average seek time
■ full stroke seek time
The step rate should be set either by default or via FLOPPARM
before this test is run (head settle time is ignored). However,
do not use a step rate faster than that passed by TESTSTEP. At
best the results will be meaningless and at worst you might
damage your drive.
To run the benchmark you will need an error-free formatted
floppy. SEEKBNCH takes one parameter, the drive letter (only A
and B are supported). Here's a sample command and sample output.
seekbnch a
Floppy Disk Seek Benchmark, Ver 1.0 by luitje@m-net.arbornet.org
Drive A: has 80 tracks; current Step Rate is 14
Track to track seek time: 3.0 mSecs
Average seek time: 81.7 mSecs
Full Stroke seek time: 309.5 mSecs
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPSKEW ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The most important improvement you can make in using your floppy
drives is to format your disks using FDFORMAT by Christoph
Hochstätter or ATFMT by Oleg Kibirev. They can be found on the
Internet in any of the SimTel archives in the directory
msdos/diskutil. These programs allow almost complete control over
how your disks are formatted. Among other things, you can put up
to 820K on 5¼" DSDD disks, 1.48 meg on 5¼" HD disks and 1.7 meg
on 3½" HD disks. In terms of speeding up floppy disk transfers,
these programs allow you to control the way sectors are arranged
on a track. This concept is called sector sliding by FDFORMAT
and sector spinning by ATFMT; in the US it's known as sector
skewing. Basically, the idea is that since there is some
mechanical delay in changing heads or tracks it may be desirable
to put the first sector of a new head or track "later" in the
track so the computer doesn't have to wait for the floppy to make
a complete revolution before that sector can be read. See these
programs' documentation for more details on how this works. The
time savings when reading or writing a floppy can be substantial
when you format it using the optimal skew parameters and, as an
added benefit, formatting is faster, too.
You can specify head skew and track skew in both FDFORMAT and
ATFMT by the X and Y parameters, respectively. The DOS FORMAT
program does not support sector skewing at all; this is
equivalent to using FDFORMAT or ATFMT with X and Y both set to
zero. But what values should you use for these parameters?
Well, when FDFORMAT first introduced this feature, I wrote a
batch file which formatted a test disk with various combinations
of the head and sector skew parameters and then measured how long
it took to copy a large file to the floppy. It took about an
hour to run and tested 16 combinations of X and Y values for just
one disk format. FLOPSKEW does the same job in just a few
seconds but tests even more combinations of parameter values.
To use FLOPSKEW, first decide which setting of FLOPPARM to use
and then run FLOPPARM with that parameter since the step rate and
head settle time will both affect skewing. Then, format a disk
of the type and capacity for which you want to find the optimal
skewing parameters with the X and Y parameters both 0 and
interleave 1. Although FLOPSKEW is a non-destructive test, you
should use a freshly formatted disk to ensure that these
parameters are set correctly, otherwise the test will give
strange results. If you don't specify X and Y, FDFORMAT and
ATFMT default to the correct values except that they both must
use an interleave of 2 for the 5¼" 1.44 meg and 3½" 1.7 meg
formats (and for this reason it doesn't make sense to use sector
skewing with these formats). DOS FORMAT always formats with no
sector skewing and interleave 1.
Then, simply run FLOPSKEW with the drive letter of the floppy you
want to test as the only parameter. Here is an example command
and its results for a double density (720K) 3½" disk on my
system:
flopskew b
Find Optimal Head & Track Skew, Ver 1.0
9 Sectors/Track, 80 Tracks, 2 Sides
Head Skew Times (milliseconds):
X: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time: 32 54 74 95 116 137 158 178 199
Track Skew Times (milliseconds):
Y: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time: 232 53 74 95 116 137 158 178 199
Interleave: 1
Minimum skewing parameters: X=0, Y=1
Recommended skewing parameters: X=1, Y=2
First you are shown the format of the test diskette, then some
test results and finally the recommended skewing parameters. If
you are interested in some technical details about the test you
should read the next few paragraphs; otherwise you can skip ahead
to the next section. Just use the recommended parameters to
format your disks and expect your diskette throughput to become
about 30% faster.
Two tests are run to find the best values for the Head Skew
parameter (X) and the Track Skew parameter (Y). The head skew
test is run by reading the last sector of the first track using
head 0 and then measuring how long, in milliseconds, it takes to
read the first sector of that same track with head 1. (If the
disk is formatted with only one side this test is not run.) The
track skew test is run by reading the last sector of the first
track using head 1 (if testing a double sided disk) and then
measuring how long it takes to read the first sector of the
second track using head 0. In the results above, the second line
tells how long this took, in milliseconds, for each of the
sectors on the second track read.
Let's look at the example data to see what we can learn. First,
notice that the times to read different sectors in the head skew
test increase by about 22 milliseconds. This is just the time it
takes to read one sector for this format. The formula is
sector read time(ms) = 1000 * 60sec/min * rpm / sectors
For this format the drive rotates at 300 rpm and there are 9
sectors so the time to read a sector works out to 22.2
milliseconds. This formula can be modified to figure the time to
read an entire track by dropping the final division by sectors.
In this case, it is 200 ms.
To determine the best values for X and Y, the program finds the
smallest time and the corresponding number of sectors skipped
from the line above. The data show that for my system no sectors
should be skipped when changing heads so the optimal head skew
parameter, X, is 0. Typical values are 0 or 1 for most systems.
Now look at the results for the track skewing test; the time to
change tracks without skipping any sectors is 232! This is the
time it takes to read a whole track plus the sector plus some
overhead. In this case the 0 sector skew provided by DOS format
and the default values used by FDFORMAT and ATFMT yield a big
waste of time when reading or writing multiple tracks. On my
system the optimal track skew parameter, Y, is 1. Typically, it
ranges from 1 to 3 on the systems I have looked at.
Now notice that the program recommends values for the skew
parameters which are 1 greater than the optimal values. This is
because the penalty for choosing a skew value which is too small
is severe: you have to wait a whole revolution, in this case 200
ms, when changing tracks. On the other hand, the penalty for
having a skew value which is one too big is only 22 ms. Since
some software may introduce an additional delay when changing
tracks, it is a safe bet to be conservative when choosing the
skew values. If you regularly use floppies on two computers you
should run FLOPSKEW on both of them and choose the higher of the
recommended skew parameters.
Take the values of X and Y found by the above procedure and use
them to format your floppies in the future. To make this easy,
you can create a batch file, 4DOS or CED alias, or FDFORMAT or
ATFMT configuration file with those parameters in it. Any time
you format a floppy or read or write a floppy formatted this way
it will go faster.
How much faster? Well, assuming the most likely case that only
track seek is a problem and that the sector skewing is only off
by 1 or 2, then on average the computer has to wait for a full
disk revolution every second track it reads. Eliminate the wait
and you can reduce the time spent reading and writing by 1/3.
When formatting a diskette, skewing only affects the verify
operation so the time reduction is somewhat less, about 20%.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPRPM ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
If you are having trouble reading or writing diskettes,
especially with a large number of sectors per track, the problem
may lie with the speed at which the drive spins. FLOPRPM will
test this condition for you. Simply place a formatted disk in
the drive you want to test and run FLOPRPM with the drive letter
as the only argument. The program will then test and display the
rotation rate continuously until you press a key. Normally, all
PC floppy drives will run within an RPM or two of 300 except for
5¼" HD drives which run at 360. If you are having problems and
the speed of your drive is off by more than that or the speed
varies a lot, you may be able to get better operation by
adjusting the speed of your drive. Unfortunately, no general
guidelines can be given about how to do that because drives
differ in their design.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPINFO ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
This program simply reads the formatting information of a disk
and displays it. With all of the different formats supported by
FDFORMAT and ATFMT it's nice to know what format a particular
disk is. Also, since some of these formats require a TSR to
read, you might want to know if a particular floppy can be read
on another system which doesn't have a copy of that TSR
available. Or, perhaps you want to quickly find out whether a
floppy is HD or DD.
FLOPINFO takes one parameter, the drive letter. Here is an
example command and response, this time for a 1.4M 3½" disk.
flopinfo b
╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Floppy Disk Information, Ver. 1.1 by luitje@m-net.arbornet.org ║
╠═══════╤════════╤═══════════╤═══════════╤═════════════╤══════════╤═══════╣
║ Sides │ Tracks │ Sec/Track │ Bytes/Sec │ Res/Hid Sec │ Root Dir │ Media ║
╟───────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼───────╢
║ 2 │ 80 │ 18 │ 512 │ 1 / 0 │ 224 │ F0 ║
╠═══════╧════╤═══╧═══════════╪═══════════╧═╤═══════════╧╤══════╤══╧═══════╣
║ OEM Name │ Volume Name │ Vol Ser Num │ FAT Type │ FATs │ Capacity ║
╟────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────╢
║ "MSDOS5.0" │ "NO NAME " │ 04DA-F7FE │ "FAT12 " │ 2 │ 1457664 ║
╚════════════╧═══════════════╧═════════════╧════════════╧══════╧══════════╝
The Volume Name displayed is from the boot sector; there is
another one in the root directory which may be different. The
Volume Name, Volume Serial Number and FAT Type are not present on
disks formated with versions of DOS prior to 4.0 and are
displayed as dots in that case. The "Res/Hid Sec" box shows two
numbers, the number of reserved and hidden sectors. "Root Dir"
shows the number of files allowed in the root directory. "Media"
is the media descriptor byte.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ FLOPSCRB ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
If you've ever bought one of those inexpensive disk cleaning kits
you've probably noticed that the instructions which come with
them are kind of skimpy. Something like: "squirt some cleaning
fluid on the cleaning disk and then operate the drive for 10
seconds". But how do you "operate the drive"?
You could use the dir command but it will time out with a read
error after a few seconds so you have to keep re-issuing
commands. Even worse, the dir command only tries to read track
zero so you are only using a small portion of the cleaning
surface. Or you could use other programs which access the disk,
like format, but they all have the same problems: it's difficult
to control how long the cleaning is done and which part of the
cleaning disk is used.
FLOPSCRB takes care of these problems and in addition may allow
the cleaning disk to be used longer because of the way it manages
the cleaning process. FLOPSCRB cleans the drive in three stages.
The first stage uses the outside third (which has the largest
area) of the cleaning disk. This removes the worst of the
accumulated oxide. The second stage moves to the middle third of
the disk where any remaining particles are moved. The third
stage moves to the inner third of the cleaning disk to finish the
job. With this sequence the head becomes progressively cleaner
instead of just rubbing dirt off on the cleaning disk one
revolution and then picking it up the next.
FLOPSCRB only needs to be told which drive to clean (only A and B
are supported at this time) and how long to run the cleaning
action. To clean drive a for 15 seconds (5 seconds for each
stage) you'd use the following command:
flopscrb a 15
NOTE: The abrasiveness of the cleaning pads may vary from kit to
kit so always follow the manufacturer's instructions about
cleaning time. It may be possible to damage the floppy drive head
by cleaning the drive excessively.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ Acknowledgements ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Outside of the cryptic documentation for the NEC µPD765A floppy
disk controller chip there is not a whole lot of information
available about the nitty gritty of controlling floppies. I'd
like to thank two freeware authors who have written worthwhile
programs and then published the source code for others to learn
from. Christoph Hochstätter's FDFORMAT provides lots of good
examples of code for using the BIOS INT 13 calls and creating the
basic disk structure (it also lets you learn a little German
along the way). The 2M package by Ciriaco de Celis provides some
utilities which really push the envelope of putting the maximum
amount of information on a floppy disk. I needed to issue
commands directly to the floppy drive controller to make FLOPSCRB
work and I learned how to do this (and some Spanish) by reading
his source code. Understanding these programs can be slow going
if you don't understand German and Spanish but it sure beats
disassembling your BIOS! Look for them in the msdos/diskutil
directory of your local SimTel mirror.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ Distribution ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
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The programs and documentation in the Floppy Tool Kit package are
copyrighted works of William Luitje. The author grants you a
non-exclusive license to copy and distribute these works as long
as they are distributed as a group with no additional files added
to the archive (this includes BBS ads) and the programs and
documentation are not modified in any way.
On a related note, I am distributing these programs for free. If
you paid money for a floppy or CD-ROM with these programs on it,
be aware that I am not seeing a penny of it. What you paid for
is the service of distribution. I'm sure that you understand the
nature of transactions like that but I have heard from people who
"bought one of my programs" and expect me to conduct a
correspondence course on basic PC techniques, theory and repair
because of their "purchase". While I am always open to bug
reports and well thought out questions (and postcards!), please
read the documentation carefully and check with local experts
before you fire up your word processor.
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│▒▒▒ Liability ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
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This software is intended to be safe to use. All tests and
information programs are read only so no data on your test disks
should be altered. FLOPSCRB and SEEKBNCH could conceivably damage
a drive if used inappropriately but I abused my drives quite a
bit while writing and debugging these programs and haven't had
any problems. About the only other problem you might have is
that if you set the floppy drive parameters too fast you may get
read or write errors. Never the less, in using this software you
assume all risk should anything go wrong. I think that is pretty
unlikely, but, hey, sometimes it rains fish!
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│▒▒▒ Registration ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
While this software may be freely copied and used, I do request
that you register it if you use it. Just send me either a
postcard or some e-mail telling me which programs you find useful
and which version of the package you are using. This is only
partially an ego massage for the author. I enjoy writing useful
utilities and have several other pieces of freeware out floating
around the net so I would like feedback about which of them are
worth expanding and supporting.
William Luitje
2677 Wayside Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
USA
Internet: luitje@m-net.arbornet.org
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│▒▒▒ History ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Version 1.0 20 Jan 94
First release with FLOPPARM, FLOPTEST, FLOPSKEW, FLOPRPM and
FLOPINFO
Version 1.1 13 Mar 95
Changes to FLOPPARM: tweaked FAST parameters, changed
allowable ranges of parameters
Changes to FLOPINFO: added volume name, volume serial number,
FAT type, hidden sectors and media byte to output. Reorganized
display for readability.
Minor internal changes to the rest of the programs.
Added TESTSTEP
Added SEEKBNCH
Added FLOPSCRB
Copyright 1994-1995 by William Luitje
