RXFORMAT

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
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BSD mandoc
BSD 4.2

NAME

rxformat - format floppy disks

SYNOPSIS

rxformat [-d ] special

DESCRIPTION

The rxformat program formats a diskette in the specified drive associated with the special device special ( Special is normally /dev/rx0 for drive 0, or /dev/rx1 for drive 1.)

Available option:

-d: Force double density formatting. By default, the diskette is formatted single density; Single density is compatible with the IBM 3740 standard (128 bytes/sector). In double density, each sector contains 256 bytes of data.

Before formatting a diskette rxformat prompts for verification if standard input is a tty (this allows a user to cleanly abort the operation; note that formatting a diskette will destroy any existing data). Formatting is done by the hardware. All sectors are zero-filled.

DIAGNOSTICS

such device: means that the drive is not ready, usually because no disk is in the drive or the drive door is open. Other error messages are selfexplanatory.

FILES

/dev/rx?

AUTHOR

Helge Skrivervik

BUGS

A floppy may not be formatted if the header info on sector 1, track 0 has been damaged. Hence, it is not possible to format a completely degaussed disk. (This is actually a problem in the DEC hardware.)

HISTORY

The rxformat command appeared in BSD 4.2

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 06:25:25 GMT, May 19, 2025